Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

Speaking to Newstalk ZB’s Kerre Woodham this morning, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters said the Government was confident it was “ready to go” in engaging with the incoming Trump Administration. “We have got some serious connections with the incoming administration, that’s the key part here,” he said. He mentioned New Zealand’s “very experienced Ambassador” in Washington who he said was there “to ensure if there was a change in the election results in America against what the media forecast, we’d be ready to go and we are.” Peters is referencing NZ Ambassador to the US Rosemary Banks. She’s a senior New Zealand diplomat who served in the role between 2018 and 2022 (so during part of Donald Trump’s previous term), and was reappointed earlier this year after serving ambassador Bede Corry was announced as the new Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The Foreign Affairs Minister said the Government would take the next couple of months – prior to President Trump being sworn in again – to make reconnections. He said a lot of work has previously gone into getting a free trade agreement with the United States when Trump was last President, between 2017 and 2021. “We didn’t take the chance when it was all set to go. We cannot afford to make this mistake next time.” Prime Minister Christopher Luxon earlier this week admitted there was little political appetite in the US for such a deal and he didn’t see that changing. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There's been much political play made around outside organisations having the potential to use violence on at risk kids. And really, it's entirely the fault of inexperienced politicians in the Coalition Government that Labour and Te Pati Māori have got any traction on this at all. The PMs ‘I know nothing, I know nothing’, when he was questioned about this yesterday on the Mike Hosking Breakfast, the refusal to answer questions on a leaked document, it just makes a vacuum which the opposition can fill with accusations of ‘violence’.   In the leaked document, Children's Minister Karen Chhour warns the use of force and detention powers by Oranga Tamariki and third-party staff may be viewed as increasing the potential risk of abuse in custody, particularly in light of historic abuse experienced by children and young people in similar programs reported in the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care report. You bet your bippy it was viewed as increasing the potential risk of abuse. Labour and Te Pati Māori were in their boots and all.   However, this morning the Minister for Children clarified on the Mike Hosking Breakfast that restraints are standard operating procedure in any institution, and organisations needed to have those powers outside of the institutions, hence the need to amend the legislation.   “Force can be used but only under very strict conditions, and we have regulations to protect that. I would be saying we would use restraints if a child was going to abscond or was going to hurt themselves or hurt somebody else. That already currently happens within certain facilities. The fact of the matter is, if we are going to give these kids a shot, if we are going to give these young people a chance, we have to have the ability to actually put a little bit of trust in them and be able to do things outside of the residence, but we also have to keep ourselves safe while doing that.”  Right. So the explanation, as it was finally given, is that the legislation has to be amended because at the moment, and this happened under Labour as well, it happened under any administration, you are able to use restraints for the good of the individual to prevent harm happening to them, and for good of the staff and anybody else that might be in their way. So, if you're going to protect people from the young offender, protect the young offender from themselves, you can use restraint.   That has been abused in the past, absolutely, but these children, these at-risk youth would not be there if they didn't already know exactly what violence looked like from a very early age. They have come from horribly dysfunctional homes. They've learnt that violence is the answer, that if there's a question, violence is the answer.  Not all of them, but many of them. Even with the use of restraints by staff, I would venture to suggest they're still safer there than some of their homes. Where restraint is not a word, they could either spell or act on.   So if you are going to trust the young people to be able to go out into the community, to try and show them that there is another way of living and being, there has to be a safety net around them and around the people they encounter. To do that you need to amend legislation. I do not know what's so hard about that. What's so hard about explaining that?  The coalition government got themselves in a complete tangle allowing Labour and Te Pati Māori headlines, allowed them to make political capital because of their own fumbling communications. I think most of us, we understand that if you want to be able to bring at-risk kids out into the community to work or to participate in community activities, there needs to be some measure by which they can be kept safe in the community can too.  The use of restraints will be measured and monitored, and if it is abused then all hell breaks loose. Hopefully, the days that saw so many children's lives effectively destroyed under state care are gone because the light has been shone into the dark corners. It doesn't mean there will never ever need to be a use of restraint ever again, but it has to be monitored, it has to be seen. And I think that's what we've got here.  All that's going to happen is that the kids will be kept safe, the community will be kept safe within the institutions and outside of them. And if anybody oversteps the mark, by crikey, they will be barbecued, spit-roasted and that's the way it will be. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tensions are high as America casts their votes, the nation deeply divided down partisan lines.  Polling booths will begin to close within an hour, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump still neck in neck in all major polls.  TVNZ and Newstalk ZB’s Jack Tame told Kerre Woodham that whoever wins, there will be tens of millions of Americans who are very happy, and tens of millions who are very unhappy with the result.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Unemployment has risen again.  Latest figures from Stats NZ show the unemployment rate has reached 4.8% in the September quarter.  That's up from 4.6% in the June quarter, and well up from 3.2% in the December 2021 quarter.  NZ Herald Business Editor Liam Dann told Kerre Woodham that there was no question they would see people lose their jobs, but the fact that it came in lower than many forecasts is a good thing.  He says that over the last 20 or 30 years, New Zealand has historically had an unemployment rate above 5%, so we are still below the historical average.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There’s plenty of nerves, with polling booths beginning to close in the next hour across the US.  Candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have been neck-and-neck in all major polls, with a focus on key battleground states like Pennsylvania.  CNN Correspondent Paula Newton told Kerre Woodham there's more uncertainty around the election this time.  She says since last time was a Covid election, all the voting information is unreliable.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A math professor believes the Education Minister deserves kudos for their new maths programme.  The Government's announced 2000 Year 7 and 8 students will take part in a programme aiming to boost math achievement over the first two terms of next year.  Erica Stanford says it's designed to give more Kiwi kids confidence in mathematics.  Massey University Distinguished Maths Professor Gaven Martin told Kerre Woodham that this plan can start to address many of the problems thy had.   He says that while there may have been a fair bit of resistance, at the end of the day, they turned around and delivered something that’s beneficial for the whole country.   LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Now we've known for some time that New Zealand's once world class education system is no longer – that it is failing. And I really, really feel for the teachers. Education has been hijacked by ideologues who want children to share their world view and care little for the fact that our kids have no idea how to spell world or view. Our literacy is bad, our numeracy is even worse.   According to international studies, we are now one of the least numerate countries in the developed world. In the 2019 Trends and International Maths and Science study, New Zealand's 9-year-olds, the Year 5s, ranked 40th out of 64 countries. Year 9s were even worse - their scores fell by the largest margin since the study began in 1994. Māori and Pasifika students ranked lowest of all.   In 2021, a report published in New Zealand by the Royal Society of Mathematics Advisory Panel, which advised the Education Ministry, noted that 1/4 of preschoolers cannot count from 1-10. That's not on the ideological educators at the ministry, that's not on teachers, that is on parents. By Year 9, fewer than one tenth of students are working at their age-appropriate level. Massey University Distinguished Professor of Mathematics Gaven Martin described maths education in this country as a “goddamn mess”.   Families with money or access to money or the desperation to find money from somewhere, anywhere, have been sending their kids to after school tutoring. The NumberWorks’nWords franchises and the Kip McGraths that you'll see around the country. One parent in a New Zealand Herald story from 2021 said if you have the money, the kids go to Kumon, which is a another one of those franchises, or NumberWorks, two to three times a week. It's like a form of wealth separation, he said, as only the wealthier families can afford it. And at around about $700 a term, they’re right. The wealthy families will do it, but they seldom talk about it. The other kids just languish in the school system and remain at the bottom of the class. And so the gap between the haves and the have-nots gets wider and wider and wider.   Now the Government has announced a form of after school maths tuition, but actually in school, and free. They're starting with intermediate students in terms 1 and 2 next year – around 2000 Year 7 and 8 students who are behind in their learning will take part in an intensive support program to bring them up to the required curriculum level in maths. The trial will use small group tutoring and supervised online tuition for 30 minutes, up to four times a week for each child. Basically, your Kip McGraths, Your NumberWorks, and what have you. There will be $30 million for high quality curriculum aligned workbooks, teacher guidance and lesson plans to be provided into every primary and intermediate School, $20 million for professional development and structured maths for teachers as well as (hip hip hooray) getting the Teaching Council to agree to lift maths entry requirements for new teachers.   Education Minister Erica Stanford spoke to Heather du Plessis-Allan last night, saying intensive tutoring is one of the best things you can do if you're behind in maths.   “We know that all of the international evidence tells us that if you are really far behind, especially in mathematics, one of the best interventions you can do is intensive tutoring in small groups to get up to where you need to be. Because a lot of our students have missed big chunks of their learning and mathematics, and we are particularly targeting those in Year 7 and 8 who are not going to see all of the benefits of our amazing new curriculum and all of our new materials and they're going to go off into high school and, you know, not be where they need to be. So we've had reading interventions in the past, we've never had one for maths, and my intention is that we put this trial up, see what it does and then roll it out.”  Yes, yes, yes, yes and more yes! We know the tutoring works. Anyone who has sent their child to one of the expensive but efficient after school tuition programs knows that it works. You've got that one-on-one – and I'm quite sure that our teachers, if they had one-on-one time sufficiently with kids who were falling behind, would be able to raise them up as well, but they simply do not have the time or the resources. Now they will.   To be fair to the previous administration, they understood that education was failing our children, they were not getting the education they deserved. The gap between the haves and the have nots, those who could and those who couldn't, was getting wider and wider and wider. In fact, I think we managed to top one aspect of the Trends in Science and Maths by having the biggest gap between those who were succeeding and those who were not. The vast majority of parents cannot afford that kind of one-on-one tuition, but we had Labour tinkering with the curriculum and bringing into Te Ao Māori into maths and science, and it was all very localised and communities could kind of pick and choose how they wanted to teach, with no resources teachers were left floundering as well. They basically had to do the work of the many thousands of bureaucrats and the Ministry of Education and come up with a curriculum.   As Professor Elizabeth Rata at Auckland University said, the draft of the new curriculum, as devised by Labour, was a national disgrace. It's a curriculum without content, it's an ideological manifesto. Children in the Far North should receive the same education as children in the far south. It should not be left to chance. And that's what happened. That's exactly what has been happening now. We've got an Education Minister who is a) passionate about giving our children what they deserve and b) has ideas about how to make it happen.   It shouldn't be left to chance, as Professor Rata says, it shouldn't be left to teachers to come up with some kind of vague curriculum which they have precious little time to do. And it shouldn't be left to parents to find $700 a term to shore up the gaps in our education system. It shouldn't be that those who can and those who have are able to circumvent our education system and be better and do better, leaving the others languishing. That is not the way we make a better New Zealand. That is not the way we make a productive of New Zealand and that's not the way we make a New Zealand that gives every child the opportunity to fulfil their potential. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There is absolutely no doubt that healthy teeth are vital for a healthy life.   Poor dental care can actually kill you. There's a small number of cases from the States they read about recently where an untreated tooth abscess led to an infection that spread to the brain, and a number of children died as a result of that.   Even without catastrophising, bad teeth are miserable. It's painful, leads to other infections throughout the body, it's unsightly - robs people of self-confidence if their teeth are all over the place.   But at $353 per visit to the dentist, on average, dental health is not a priority for many people. It can't be. If the money's not there, it's not there.   A new report has found that New Zealand's dental system as it stands is costing billions of dollars a year in lost productivity and social impact.   The report from Dental for All, who are a group of health professionals, unions and poverty campaigners, is another call to arms to make free dental care universal, with campaigners saying the cost of not acting is exceeding what it would cost to bring dental into the public health care system.    The argument against has always been the cost of it. We've seen how much our public healthcare system costs, ballooning costs, that successive chief executives of Health New Zealand have been unable to manage - bringing dental health into that adds another couple of billion to the cost. But Dental for All, and their argument is a bit like the argument David Seymour put up for funding more drugs from Pharmac. He said, well, it's going to cost us less in the long run than allowing diseases to develop and take hold within the community, so if we can prevent them from occurring in the first place, saves us down the track. That's precisely what Dental for All are arguing.   While there is free dental care up until the age of 18, the New Zealand Dental Association policy director, Doctor Robin Wyman, told the Mike Hosking Breakfast, they believe free dental care should continue into your mid- 20s.   “It would make some sense if you look at the research to increase the free dental care scheme which goes up to 18 years old into the mid 20s. That's where we see quite a peak of acute admissions into hospital in that young adult group. We're not talking about fractures and things like that, we're talking about infections and things that need to be treated.   Where do you draw the line, though? If you said free, what is it? Is it a check up? Is it a filling? Is it root canal work? Is it veneers? What is it?   I think we talk about the essential dental care - so check-ups and fillings, tooth out if that needed to happen, maybe you would go to root canal treatment, particularly if you're talking about front teeth and those sorts of areas. We're not talking about cosmetic treatments like veneers and orthodontics in that sort of area.”  Dental for All estimates the current system is costing $2.5 billion in lost productivity, $ 3.1 billion in lost life satisfaction, or lack of quality of life.   Another $103 million was spent on sick days through poor dental health. However, as Doctor Wyman pointed out to Mike they were looking at the lower 22 percentile, so not New Zealanders overall.   This has come up periodically. The Greens proposed universal dental care, funded with the wealth tax. Labour were looking at free dental care when they were tossing out ‘please vote for us’ during the election campaign - one of them was free dental care for under 30s, gradually increasing that to the population overall.   It is hugely expensive and it only gets worse as you get older. As teeth start to age, the gaps start to form, they start to erode and that's when you need the expensive dental work done. The crowns, the root canal and the like. If you can get through 15 to 18 and you don't need the orthodontics, the next time the big expenses hit is around about 50 plus as your teeth start to age.   There are people who travel overseas because it is less expensive to go to Thailand and get your teeth done, even with the airfares, even with the stay in the hotel, than it is to go to New Zealand dentists.   If things go Pete Tong, however, you're not covered by ACC, so it could end up costing you more in the worst-case scenario.   All very well and good to talk about let's pay for the costs upfront and then we don't have to pay for the lost productivity, the quality of life.  You can make up any number really when it says look at your lost quality of life, lost productivity.  I've no doubt that there are people living in misery because of the state of their mouth and it's leading to bigger problems further down the track that sees them hospitalised.   But again, if the money is not there, it's not there, just as it's true of household accounts, it's true of government accounts.   Do we have $2 billion right now to put into universal dental healthcare? Adding that to what we already can't pay for in the public health system.   Some people are lucky. Some people are born with great teeth. Never have to worry really. Others are plagued from the time they're born with chalky teeth that give way, cause problems, end up with cavities, can't afford to treat them and it just gets worse and worse and worse.   Is it a case of having to come up with the money so we save money down the track? Do you buy that having a universal dental healthcare system would save us money in the long run, or is it something that you just have to deal with yourself? Pray that your parents gifted you good teeth?   Back in the olden days, like the 40s, 50s and 60s, women used to have their teeth taken out before they got married and fitted with dentures, so they didn't cost their husbands anything. Can you imagine? Perfectly healthy teeth being ripped out of the mouth of a 19-year-old recently engaged woman as a kind of dowry paid for by the bride's family. We don't want to get back to that now, do we?    LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It is becoming a fairly common story that debt is getting so big, people are burying their head in the sand rather than dealing with it.  Money mentalist Lynda Moore tells Kerre Woodham debt is easier to ignore in the modern day, without red-letter hard reminders arriving in the mail. Without help and support, people can very easily get lost or trust the wrong people.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The interim report into the grounding of Interislander’s Aratere ferry has found the bridge crew didn't know how to turn off the autopilot function on a new steering control system. A report by the Transport Accident Investigation Commission was published yesterday, setting out the facts and circumstances established to this point and its inquiry into the incident, which remains ongoing. So, the interim report said the Aratere received a new steering control system in May 2024, that was a month prior to the incident, to work with the ship's autopilot and integrated bridge navigation system. The Aratere was pootlingalong and it was just past its second waypoint off Mabel Island when the autopilot was engaged at 9:26pm, putting the steering for the other teddy under autopilot control. About 30 seconds later, a master who was on board the ship to refamiliarize himself with the Aratere after some time away, pressed the turn execute button, intending to initiate the Mabel Island waypoint turn. After seeing the Aratere was heading towards shore, the crew attempted to press the takeover button and turned the wheel hard to port, all to no effect. The bridge team was unaware that to transfer steering control from the autopilot to the central steering console, the new steering system required them to either set the same rudder command at both consoles, which makes sense, or hold down the takeover button for five seconds. You couldn't just press it, it had to be held down for five seconds. So how did the crew not know that? Well, according to Interislander Executive General Manager Duncan Roy, who spoke to Heather du Plessis-Allan last night, you can't know what you can't know.  “That's what I'm saying. We got a new piece of equipment and there was a very specific set of circumstances that meant that required a 5 second override. For the 83 crossings prior to this, the one press button worked. The day they arrived in Picton that day, they pressed the button once to take control. It was only when in this very particular set of circumstances where the rudder was out of sync with the steering wheel that you had to do a 5 second override. The bridge didn't know. And are you telling me that whoever provided this equipment to Interislander told no one in Interislander that in the specific set of circumstances, you have to press the button for five seconds. Like literally nobody knew? We are working with that provider right now and as TAIC said today a number of times it's a very complex part of the investigation. Duncan, but nobody in Interislander knew you had to press it for 5 seconds? Heather, if we'd known that you had to do it, we would have done it. OK, well, it might have just been a communication problem, but I get it. Did somebody go get a coffee? Yeah, we can put that to bed right now, the right number of people are on bridge doing their job professionally. No one left the bridge to get coffee.” There we go - nobody left the bridge to get coffee, that was all just scurrilous scuttlebutt. So, you can't know what you don't know, do you? I mean, I've got a new little oven in my kitchen and I couldn't make the elements go, so I hadn't bothered to read the instructions. Read the instructions, saw that there's a child lock was on, which you had to press and hold down for five seconds, funnily enough. And then it would come off and I could operate the elements. But I suppose you can't really Google when you're on the bridge of a ship, as it's heading towards shore, can you? So, you can't know what you don't know. If you accept, and I do, the interim report, if the provider of the gear said oh, by the way, if your rudder is out of sync and this is happening, you can't just press the button once, it has to be held down and held down for five seconds. So, if they haven't told you that, you're not going to know.   Immediately after the grounding, Interislander worked with the company that provided the new steering system to understand what had happened, and they've now issued new guidance on the use of the autopilot system and upgraded retraining of deck staff on the control system. So, fair enough. So far from what you've heard, the crew, Interislander (initially, of course), the bosses and then the captains, and then the crew weren't briefed properly by the provider, they weren't given every circumstance in what to do when that happens, that's now been rectified. One part of me goes that is perfectly understandable, I totally get it. The other part of me, a little part of me is going nobody seems to brief anybody properly these days. You know the Transpower crew with the nuts and the bolts and having to redo roading because you've done something really stupid that somebody should have picked up along the way. There's a little part of me that goes is nobody briefed properly about anything anymore? Are the where are the men in their walk shorts and their walk socks and their highly polished shoes and their short sleeve shirts and their ties and their pocket protectors? Where are they? They wouldn't have let this happen. Measure twice, cut once. That have read through every semi colon of that manual, had it seared into their little grey consciousness, and when the ship started going and the crew were going yikes, what's happening? Somebody sensible would have stepped forward and said on page 273 of this manual, you'll see that if you hold the button down for five seconds we'll be able to take control again. If you take it as a one off, it seems like a genuine accident. The provider didn't brief Interislander properly, the provider didn't brief the client properly. But if you're taking over some heavy machinery, like if you were working in the heavy machinery industry, either in construction or farming or what have you, are you always briefed properly or do you sometimes find yourself in the middle of a field or the middle of a ditch, thinking what the Dickens? Now what do I do? And you ring the provider and they’re like mate sorry I should have told you. To me it seems a reasonable explanation, but not if it's happening all the time, all the everywhere. In this case, no real harm done. A bit of bowel damage happens when you run into land and you're a ship. Nobody hurt, everybody learned a valuable lesson. No real harm done but there could have been.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.