Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

Labour leader Chris Hipkins admits his party’s Auckland light rail and KiwiBuild policies were “undeliverable” when proposed ahead of the 2017 election. Hipkins, speaking to Newstalk ZB this morning, made the concession amid his reflections on the 2023 election campaign in which he believed Labour struggled to resonate with voters who had “decided it was time for a change”. The Remutaka MP joined ZB host Kerre Woodham for an hour of discussion and talkback. Woodham pressed Hipkins on Labour’s woeful result in the last election, receiving less than 27 per cent of the vote. Hipkins accepted now was the time to rebuild and assess whether the policies Labour took to the election needed to be revised. Woodham questioned whether Labour’s inability to implement some of its policies during its six years in government was a primary contributor to the party’s demise. Hipkins then admitted not all of Labour policies as proposed ahead of the 2017 election were deliverable. “You can’t always come in with delivery-ready policies in the way that I think we thought you could,” he said. “Auckland light rail and KiwiBuild were massive commitments, and the reality is they were too ambitious to do from Opposition. We shouldn’t have gone into the campaign promising those two things.” Labour leader Chris Hipkins told Newstalk ZB host Kerre Woodham his party needed to rebuild. Photo / Michael Craig In 2017 under then-leader Jacinda Ardern, Labour promised to build light rail from the Auckland CBD to the airport within a decade. However, progress stalled and any recent work on developing light rail in Auckland had been scrapped by the current Coalition Government. KiwiBuild promised 100,000 affordable homes across the country within 10 years, but that target had to be dropped as it was deemed overly ambitious. “Light rail is not undeliverable, but the way it was proposed in 2017 was undeliverable and KiwiBuild, the 100,000 [homes] in the timeframes that they were talking about was also undeliverable.” On the most recent election campaign, Hipkins argued it “didn’t really matter” what Labour campaigned on as people wanted change. “That was a very difficult mood to shift.” At the party’s recent caucus retreat, Hipkins said MPs would be discussing what tax policy platform Labour would run on in the 2026 election campaign after Hipkins’ proposal to strip GST off fresh fruit and vegetables failed to impress voters. MPs David Parker and Grant Robertson, who last night gave his valedictory speech, had worked up a wealth tax proposal ahead of the election but this was shot down by Hipkins. Just this week, Hipkins conceded the Labour Government should have done more to address public concerns about unruly state housing tenants as the current Government seeks to use the threat of eviction to improve behaviour. He referenced the matter this morning, saying he thought Kāinga Ora was “too slow” to relocate people as an alternative option to eviction. Adam Pearse is a political reporter in the NZ Herald Press Gallery team, based at Parliament. He has worked for NZME since 2018, covering sport and health for the Northern Advocate in Whangārei before moving to the NZ Herald in Auckland, covering Covid-19 and crime.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Commerce Commission says the banking sector lacks competition.   Its study has found a two-tier system with the four major banks having an apparent focus on maintaining profits, resulting in stable market shares, high profits, and an underinvestment in their platforms.   Herald Wellington Business Editor Jenee Tibshraeny told Kerre Woodham that the Commission says if we give a smaller bank, Kiwibank, more capital, it can grow.   She says the problem is the Government's trying to tighten its purse strings, so any money it gives Kiwibank will be questioned.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We knew it was bad.   You knew it. I knew it. Anyone with half a brain knew it was bad, but now we have the data to back up the calls, the stories, the headlines from last year. Police stats supplied to the Dairy and Business owners group show that in 2023, 148,599 crimes were reported at retail locations. Lot of figures in here, I'm sorry, 148,599 crimes.   So, if you break that down, that is 12,383 retail offences reported every month. 2850 per week.  407 retail crimes per day. 17 offences per hour. 407 retail crimes per day. How did that policing by consent policy work out for you, huh?   That is triple the crimes that were reported in 2020. Five times higher than the figures for 2015, and that is only reported crime. There is so much crime that you saw, that I saw, we all saw that probably, almost undoubtedly, went unreported. It's only when it got serious that it was reported.   What a sad and sorry mess. The figures also showed that assaults on retail workers were up 20% on 2022. But 121% higher than in 2015. We all knew things were bad. Did you have any idea it was this bad? Possibly if you work in retail, you did.   The previous administration tried a softly, softly approach to offending and it is clear it does not work. And it is expensive to try and turn around youths who are set on a bad path. Worth it, but really, really expensive. It is just so dispiriting, that's the thing that gets me. You could, I could see this all unfolding, but we weren't in the position to make decisions to turn it around until the election. And even then, so much has happened. So much money has been wasted. There's only so much that humans can do, that turning around the damage that's been done is going to be really difficult.   But we could see it, could we not? I mean this is something we talked about ad nauseam and people said I'm getting sick of you bashing the government. Well, you know, they deserve to be bashed. What happens when you tell people that their bad behaviour won't see them evicted from government housing? Shocking, their bad behaviour continues.   What happens when you tell people they won't be evicted for nonpayment of rent in their Kainga Ora state funded accommodation? Guess what? They don't pay the rent. The total amount owed in rent arrears has increased from $2.3 million in September 2019 to $17 million September 2022. Three years of saying to people, hey, if you don't pay your rent, we won't move you on. What happens? They don't pay it. We knew that.   What happens when you tell people that they're victims and that they are not responsible for their own actions? They believe you. And they blame others for their behaviour and the outcomes that result from their behaviour. When you create a climate where everybody's a victim, where the government and only the government can help you, you are not the author of your own destiny, you are not self-determining individual. (That is what sets us apart from the primates for the love of all its holy, the fact that we are self-determining, that we are responsible for our actions).   This is what happens. And we all saw it coming. Everybody, that is, except the people who were in the position to make the decisions to turn this around.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One of the keystone policies of the last government was its Sustaining Tenancies Framework. It was the best and the worst in a way of Labour, because in theory and on paper it makes a certain kind of sense.   You give one of the most dispossessed and tragic of humans a home. They don't have one. They never had a show from the time they were born. If you look at some of the children taken in by Oranga Tamariki - 4-year-olds who are so emaciated they can't walk, who are so traumatised they can't speak. They grow into adults. They have very few prospects. They are homeless, you give them a home. Then, you do not give up on them, no matter how bad their behaviour might be. The theory goes that the person is cosseted and loved and supported and eventually they realise that although their childhood was absolutely dreadful, although they have been let down by every single person who was supposed to care for them throughout their lives, they will not be let down by the Labour government and Kainga Ora and lo! Magically and with tears all round, they become a good human who understands their contract with society.   Except, except, except, how do you measure it? Who has to pay the price while this process is going on? It's the other tenants who have to put up with this unruly, disruptive, damaged, anti-social tenant while this process of transmogrification takes place. They are the ones who are terrorised. The neighbours are the ones who have to get the kids back to sleep when the all-night parties wake them. They are the ones whose lives are threatened when they finally complain. And to make matters worse, you have 25,000 people waiting in motels watching as a small number of anti-social tenants trash their new Kainga Ora homes. And then they watch as they're evicted, but not out onto the streets.   The Sustaining Tenancies Framework saw the anti-social tenants evicted from one K.O. development and put straight into another in another community. It must have been galling for those desperate for a home to call their own. And it must have been galling, too, to be a grateful, happy tenant of Kainga Ora, looking after your home, grateful for the opportunity to have somewhere safe and reliable in which to live. So, you take the scones round to meet your new neighbour, only to find that they have been evicted for appalling behaviour at their last home and now they're living next door to you. Where is the sense in that? Even the kindest people in the world think that ending Sustaining Tenancies is a move in the right direction. Bernie Smith is the former CEO of the Monte Cecilia Trust: “It’s certainly a move back to the real world. We've had softly, softly, which has created a lot of mayhem among many tenants and homeowners who have tried to live peacefully but found it impossible. You know, the previous government time and time again said that we are the good government, and that's why so many people were coming out of the woodwork identifying that they were homeless because the Labour Party loved the people. We know that the issue was generations and the making and what made it worse was that they decided to allow tenants to remain in their home and aided the illegal activity, no matter the issues that they were creating for their neighbours and it's unacceptable.”  It was unacceptable and everybody knew that - those who had to live next door, right next door in the same complex, those who lived in properties next door. And it's a tiny number, for the most part Kainga Ora tenants/Housing New Zealand tenants are deeply grateful for the opportunity to have somewhere to call their own. Somewhere they can get back on their feet, where they have a home address, where they have a neighbourhood where the children can go to school. It's a tiny number that causes the problems. But their impact is vast and huge.   Back in 2022 Kainga Ora moved 605 tenants because of antisocial activity. Now that's a lot. That's a lot of impact. Sixteen they moved twice. So you can see that according to Kainga Ora, for the most part being shifted from one environment to another assisted in modifying behaviour. But they didn't have any markers or none that they could explain to me. Whenever we did any interviews with the Minister or with Kainga Ora I said how do you measure that all of this love, and all of this care, and all of the Sustaining Tenancy is modifying behaviour, how do you know? Well, no. They didn't really have an answer for that. They just hoped that the social agencies engaged with them, that the worst of the behaviour would be minimised.   It's just not common sense, it really isn't. Unless you can show that it's working, end it, and that's what the coalition government has done with the support of social housing providers, who see it as a ridiculous policy. As I said to the Nick Maling from Kainga Ora, if you didn't have 25,000 people in a motel desperate for a home to call their own, fine, spend as much time as you like with them. Brass off the other tenants, they’ll have somewhere else to go. But you've got 25,000 people waiting for a home of their own. Surely it should just be a simple swap. You cannot or will not live in a civilised society, you either don't have the skills you don't want to learn, the skills you are literally going to spit on the opportunity that's been offered to you, fine - back you go to room 203 at the Beres Court Motel and in comes the family in that motel unit, into to the beautiful townhouse or apartment that has been built by the taxpayer to give people a chance. And let the new family seize that chance and make the most of it. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I wanted to get into this on Friday when the IRD released it’s figures about the online gambling tax, and we were overrun by events. So, let's have a look at this today for the first hour at least because the Government books are open, the numbers have been crunched, and reality is starting to bite.   The size of Grant Robertson's hole has been revealed, and the optimistic numbers National was throwing around before the election, are proving to be just that - optimistic. In August last year, during the election campaign, National announced it was going to fund $14.6 billion worth of tax relief, and it was going to pay for it by re-prioritising spending and introducing targeted revenue measures like a new foreign buyer tax on some houses.   You will recall the ‘Back Pocket Boost’ package - it included changes to income tax brackets to compensate for inflation, introducing Family Boost childcare tax credit and increasing Working for Families tax credits. It's all coming in July 1st this year.   According to National, that would mean an average household with children with an income of $120,000 would be better off by $250 a fortnight, Labour said that's absolute tosh, that 99% of Kiwi households would not get that $250, only 0.18% of them would. National said don't care, doesn't matter. An average household with no children will get up to $100 per fortnight, a full-time minimum wage earner will get $20 per fortnight. Whoop, open the champagne. And a super annuitant couple would get $26 more per fortnight. And when they were quizzed about how they were going to pay for that, when National was saying too that Labour had spent all the money, they talked to their targeted revenue measures like the foreign buyer tax on some houses, like the plan to raise revenue from online gambling.   So, all very well and good, and obviously it was attractive for people doing it tough. Attractive enough for some people to tick blue, to put National in the driver's seat when it came to forming a government. Other people ticked blue because of the claw back on the landlords able to claim interest deductibility. However, IRD put up its own costings when it came to the online gambling revenue and that came in vastly lower than what National envisaged prior to the election. That means that over the four-year forecast period, the gap between National's pre-election costings and the IRD's works out at more than 500 million - which is the second blowout the government’s had with news last Monday that the government's reinstatement of aforementioned interest deductibility would come in at $800 million more than National had costed at the election, mainly because of the horse-trading with ACT during the coalition talks.   So, all the numbers are coming in, it's worse than we thought. There's only so much you can do when it comes to public service cuts. You're not going to get as much money as you thought, but a lot of people knew that at the time. You know, everybody was saying there just aren't going to be enough foreign buyers paying that tax to help cover the cost. IRD said the online gambling revenue is vastly optimistic. It said it at the time - it's done the costings now. So why don't we just call it? We cannot afford the tax cuts. We could never afford the tax cuts. We knew we couldn't afford it. We didn't vote in National because we wanted an extra $100 a fortnight, did we? We voted for National, we voted for ACT, we voted for the Greens because they weren't Labour.   The Greens got their largest share they've ever had of the vote and saw more MPs in Parliament than they've ever had. That hasn’t aged well, but nonetheless they got their biggest share of the vote in their party's history because they weren't Labour. Because the people who could not vote for any of the right-wing parties couldn't vote Labour. ACT went up, National went up. New Zealand First were returned to Parliament because people were not going to vote Labour. That's why we have the government we have. People were not a ‘hundy’ on National and ACT’s promises and policies. They were certain, though, that they didn't want the previous administration to continue.   So, do we concede that there is no way we can afford the tax cuts? We've got to get the hospitals sorted, the police have to be paid properly, there's a million claims on that money. The promise of tax cuts was surely just a Trojan horse to get National back into power. But didn't we know this?   You know you can't run a campaign saying hey, vote for us, we're not Labour. You have to come up with something. So did you vote for the current administration because you wanted, you expected, a tax cut? A tax cut was promised to you, you've voted accordingly and you want that bloody tax cut? You want them to keep their promise? Or do you accept that the price of an extra $100 a fortnight, the price of an extra $26 per fortnight is simply too high to pay with the country in the state it's in?  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Green Party MP Darleen Tana has been suspended amid allegations she is linked to migrant exploitation at her husband’s company. A statement from the Greens’ co-leaders said Tana was suspended on Thursday afternoon because it was a conflict of interest with her small business portfolio.   The claims first came to light on February 1 when Tana informed the party a complaint had been made to the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) by a worker at her husband’s business, E-Bikes NZ.   “On February 9, the party was notified of a second complaint to the ERA,” the statement reads.  These complaints included allegations against Ms. Tana. Ms. Tana has not been a director or shareholder of E Cycles NZ since 2019.”   She was suspended after it became apparent, she may have previously been aware of the allegations. As Green party co-leader, Chloe Swarbrick told Mike Hosking this morning, an independent lawyer is conducting the investigation.   Now these are only allegations - as we know there is to be an independent investigation. If Darleen is lost to politics that would be a shame. She appears to be no dumb bunny - Darleen holds degrees in Chemical Technology and International Business Management with senior leadership experience in European telco (1997-2014), and SME manufacturing/retail in e-mobility here in Aotearoa (2014-2020).  But the Greens don't have all their sorrows to seek in the one day what with Golriz Gharaman pleading guilty to shoplifting yesterday and James Shaw quitting the party. Before everyone gets too uppity about the Greens and their moral failings though, all parties' MPs are living in glass houses, and it would not behoove them to throw stones.  We're only going back a few years - we simply don't have the time to go any further back - and there are some egregious sins that have been committed by MPs across the spectrum from 2017 onwards.    Most of us can commit errors of judgment, even criminal activity of drink driving and continue in our jobs?    Is it the party selection process or is it the fact that we are all flawed and imperfect?  And we have to accept that it's across the political spectrum now.   No one party is blameless or faultless. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Every government minister will be going for the takeaways and cracking open a bottle of something tonight, won’t they?   They might even put a movie on as well, but they’ll probably nod-off after a few minutes.  Because that 100-day plan the boss dreamed-up, done and dusted. Delivered. KPIs met. It went to the wire with Shane leaving his big health announcement to the last minute. But we got there team!  Christopher Luxon will be on the ministerial WhatsApp group telling them to enjoy the spring roll and chips, but reminding them that the next 100 days start on Monday.  And, whatever you think of the Government, there’s probably one thing we can agree on: it’s not prone to sit around and over-think things. And, for you, that might be a good thing. It might not be, either. I’m probably somewhere in the middle.  And while I can’t say it’s blown my socks off - I can say it’s exceeded my expectations on one thing. And because of that, I’m giving its first 100 days a pass mark.  I’ll get to that shortly. And it’s probably how Christopher Luxon is feeling too. Because, as he has often said, he’s never really satisfied. Always thinks things can be done better.  And with the first 100 days ticking over today, he’s already thinking about the next 100. So, it wasn’t bluster at the start - that’s how he’s going to keep on doing things. Quarterly targets. Every three months.   As he himself admits, he’s running the country just like a chief executive runs a business or an organisation.  And is he ever. Just look at the screws going on the public sector. Which I think is getting a bit out of control. Example being this nutbar situation where you’ve got one public department chief executive paying his own airfares to fly around the country and talk to staff about cost-cutting.  But while the Prime Minister is on to the next 100 days, let’s have a think about how we rate the first 100.   For starters, I’d describe them as: Stop and Start.  The Stop bit is all the policies and initiatives of the last government that it’s pulled the plug on. Stop 3 Waters. Stop the Smoke-free stuff. Stop the blanket speed limit reductions. Stop the Auckland light rail project. Stop Fair Pay agreements. Stop the Lake Onslow hydro scheme. Stop the inter-island ferries project. And that’s just a few.    The Start bit, is all the things that aren’t quite happening yet but, you know, ‘at least we’ve made a start’.  And, let’s be honest, that’s probably acceptable in just the first 100 days. Especially when you compare it to the pace the last government seemed to work at.  But I’ve felt —especially in the past couple of weeks— that the Government’s been more focused on ticking things off on the list so it can say it’s ticked things off... it’s felt more interested in that, than the substance of what it’s actually ticking off.  And we know why that is. The clock’s been ticking. 100 days. Get it done.    Which has meant that some of the stuff it’s announced feels pretty half-cocked to me.  For example, its announcement the other day that the first of its boot camps for young criminal offenders would be up-and-running by the middle of the year. With Oranga Tamariki running it.  Not run by Corrections or the military. But by Oranga Tamariki. How you have a child welfare organisation running what the Government describes as a “military-style academy” I’ll never know.   But they had to announce something, so it’s been lumbered with Oranga Tamariki because the military obviously doesn’t want a bar of it. Nor Corrections. So social workers are now going to be running boot camps.  The emergency housing changes announced on Wednesday and this daft idea or expectation that private landlords will take on tenants currently living in motels with a bit of a financial sweetener from the taxpayer and the option of kicking people out after 90 days.  I don’t know about you, but every landlord I heard from about that said they wouldn’t be touching that with a bargepole.  The gang patch ban. Fanciful, at best.   The last thing on the list is healthcare targets, which Health Minister Shane Reti is announcing today.   But, like I say, you can’t accuse the Government of sitting around and overthinking things.  So, what is it, do you think, is this one thing I mentioned earlier where the Government has exceeded my expectations? And because of that, I’m giving its first 100 days a pass mark?  It’s the fact that the coalition hasn’t fallen apart. When Christopher Luxon, David Seymour and Winston Peters signed the dotted line after all that to-ing and fro-ing after the election, I didn't expect it to last.  It may still fall apart. Because, despite them being in coalition, I wouldn’t say Luxon, Seymour and Peters are singing from the same song sheet all the time.  But it hasn’t fallen apart so far. Lord knows what it’s like behind the scenes. But we still have a government and, for me, that’s enough to give its first 100 days a pass mark. Not a merit. Not an excellence. But it’s better than I expected. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The pilot for military-style academies that are designed to turn around persistent young offenders will get underway by the middle of the year. Ten young people initially, and they'll spend up to four months —that is all the legislation allows— within their Academy.   And therein lies the problem, because according to all the best experts and best practice, it takes at least 12 months to break old habits and establish new ones. But the legislation doesn't allow it, so the four-month pilot will go ahead in the middle of the year.   It will be run along military lines, although under the auspices of Oranga Tamariki, and that bodes ill. They couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery. They don't seem to have been a terribly good manager of the young people in their care thus far.   But there will also be a rehabilitation component and trauma informed care approach, whatever that means. I'm assuming counselling sessions, a psychological component to work on what is triggering these young people to behave the way they do.   It will be for the most persistent and serious young offenders. And again, the key will be the length of the program. You can't unlearn bad habits that have taken years to become entrenched in just a matter of weeks. You and I know that. You know when you're trying to turn around our own bad habits, it's hard. So, imagine these young people who have only ever known the life they have known that has led them down this path being asked to completely transform their lives in a matter of weeks.   The other key is the support for the young people when they emerge from what is basically a cocoon. They're insulated from reality, therein their own world. They don't have to make any decisions for themselves that's taken care of. For the first time in their lives, perhaps they'll be expected to be somewhere. They'll be given food regularly. They would have to forage to survive. So, you come out of that and back into real life and that's where in the past, the programs have tripped themselves up.   Blue Light, which used to run discos in my day, is a registered charity that works in partnership with the police to deliver a range of youth programs and is the type of organisation that will be providing wrap around care once young offenders try to reintegrate back into the community, as Blue Light’s Chief operating Officer Brendan Crompton explained on the Mike Hosking breakfast this morning.    "In the New Zealand context, you’ve got two choices. When kids offend, they can either do a community-based sentence, which is what Blue Light runs, or kids can go to youth jail. So those already exist. What they’re looking at is the most persistent youth offenders, and they’re not a big group. But there are a group of persistent youth offenders who will become persistent adult offenders, who need more intensive time and support. Away from, essentially, either negative parental involvement, because the parents’ involved in gangs or crime themselves, or more commonly, what I call parental non-involvement. The parents don’t know where their 10, 11, 12-year-olds are at three o’clock in the morning.   “So they’re saying, how can we? How can we have a residential programme that’s more intensive? And then obviously the part that is where we’d be involved is when the kids are released from that period inside. What’s the wraparound support to make sure they aren’t back off and offending again?”    It is hard. One of my most memorable callers was a man called Joe who left Hawkes Bay after coming out of prison. He’d been involved in gangs there. He had to leave and come to Auckland to get away from the gang influence, the gang lifestyle. He didn't want to go to prison again. He was done. But it is so, so hard trying to start a new life. He did incredibly well. He got a job; an employer and was very honest about his past. His employer was willing to give him a chance, but try and find rent, try and find a place to rent and pay the rent on your own in Auckland. He ended up living in his car while still working. His boss let him use the showers and the bathrooms in the morning to get ready for work. We lost touch, we lost contact. I hope he's well. I hope he managed to keep going in the new direction, he was trying to forge for himself. But boy, it's tough. And that's with a grown man who's made that decision. Imagine the young ones coming out.    The wraparound support is going to be absolutely critical because boot camps, as you well know, have been tried before and they have failed. Only two of the 17 youth offenders sent to the camps across the first two years of the scheme in the late 2000s had not reoffended by 2011. In 2017, sociologist and crime expert Jared Gilbert said the effect of boot camps was quite minimal and would basically just make young crooks a bit stronger and a bit fitter.   During the election campaign, Christopher Luxon and Mark Mitchell, the Police Spokesperson then, Police Minister now, were really strong on youth crime as well they might have been given the amount of ram raids that were taking place across the country. They said the boot camp policy is going to act as a circuit breaker for young offenders, taking them off the streets and after 12 months, sending them back into the world work ready.   Well, I'm not entirely sure that we can expect them to be work ready. Just not ram-raiding Michael Hill would be a start. Not beating up each other would be a start. But proponents for the camp say the difference this time is the rehabilitative aspect, the counselling aspect. The recognition that these kids aren't necessarily bad. A lot of them are sad. So, working together on keeping them off the streets so they don't continue to victimize. Working on them so that they understand where the behaviours come from, trying to. Try to heal whatever mental trauma they have endured in the past. It's the length of time of the camp and the wrap around support back in the real world, which will be absolutely vital.   So I'd love to get your thoughts on this one. There is a youth development program in the military that if you heard the interview with Brendan Crompton this morning, you have heard him talk about that. A youth development program in the military, which is phenomenally successful, he said. It's world renowned, but that's when you've got young people who are choosing to be there. It's military by consent, if you will. So, in this case you've got young people and probably it is the last thing they want.   So, will it work this time? I hope so because there are significant differences. It is a small group of kids who will go on to offend as adults and they will end up having miserable lives for the most part. And making other people's lives misery.   So, it's worth a try, isn't it? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Well, whoofty! Where do we start with transport after the huge policy drop yesterday? Fifteen roads of national significance have been given the go ahead, no ifs, no buts. Despite the eye-watering expense, the Prime Minister says they are essential to building a productive economy. How are we going to pay for it? Good question. Because basically it's just picking a number and multiplying it by the time the roads are finished. A number of different options have been proposed and some are more concrete than others, Transport Minister Simeon Brown outlined some of them with Mike Hosking this morning.    “We're not increasing fuel taxes until 2027 and by that stage there will not have been an increase in fuel excise for six years. So, the reality is funding is needed to pay for the infrastructure that New Zealanders need to be able to get around quickly and safely. And so we're not increasing fuel taxes till 2027. The New Zealand Transport Agency, their role is to develop what's called the national and transport program that will outline when these roads will be built, how they'll be funded in terms of specifics for each particular project, but with our expectations very clear, they need to be looking at a range of funding and financing tools, whether it’s PPP’s, value capture,  build-own-operate transfers, and my expectation is they’ll be getting all that straightaway.“    Yes, so many different ways of doing it because there's a lot to pay for.   Along with the building of the 15 roads of national significance, we've also got a half billion-dollar pothole prevention fund (that will be popular) and the establishment of a Road Efficiency Group, the scrapping of Road to Zero, replacing it with targets for drink and drug testing, $4.4 billion in public transport spending.   So, Simeon Brown mentioned a few of the ways that the transport budget will be funded. We've got the fuel tax hikes in 2027. The rego’s going up, that's not a big deal in terms of extra expense, an extra $25 and then another $25. We've got an increase in fines being looked at as well, some fines could double if you're not wearing your safety belt, (hopefully we'll see that for the use of cell phones while driving as well). We've got the value capture taxes.   If you're living in an area where public transport suddenly opens up land, then you will have to pay more for it because you're land in theory becomes more desirable. We've got reducing costs by fast tracking the roads through the consent process. We've got congestion charges. You know Uncle Tom Cobbley and all really when we look at it.   We've got so much that we can, and perhaps should be doing.   Now of course, the cycling coalition have said it's not fair and this is ridiculous and other countries around the world are creating more cycleways. We do need cycleways as part of a cohesive transport plan. But cycles aren't going to carry the bulk of goods that we need to get to our ports for export and distribute around the country as imports. So, we need roads. The cycle lobby has to accept, surely in their heart of hearts, late at night as they're lying there in bed, planning their wet weather gear as they cycle into work the next day, they have to know that for their cycles to get here, they have to be brought in from another country and then distributed around the country. You can't put 100 cycles on top of a cyclist. You need a truck to do it. So, we need the roads.   I did think Simeon Brown didn't quite understand public transport when he said, well, public transport users have to pay their way too. At the moment we're trying to get people into public transport where they can ease up the congestion on the roads that we have now. The roads will take some time to build and as generally happens, when you build more roads, more cars fill it, so we need a public transport option as well.   What's fair?   What's not?   I think congestion charges make sense. Value added I’m in two minds on. I know a couple of our younger colleagues at work who bought their first homes because there was good public transport access. A developer built a series of little townhouses in one of the outer suburbs of Auckland, and a couple of younger colleagues bought them, their first home with Kiwi Saver and they chose specifically because there was good public transport links into the city. So, it was attractive to them to have public transport. Is it fair enough, then, that those who sell the land that is going to be used for the housing, have to pay a bit extra? Tolls. Nobody minds paying tolls surely, do they? Because whenever you put in a toll road, there must be an alternative. Cutting the red tape for consenting, I think everybody would agree to that, wouldn't they?   So, the roads have to be paid for, there is no Covid Fund to dip into. Without a productive economy, we can't afford anything.   So, what comes first in your mind? Have the Government got their priorities right? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Infrastructure NZ's welcoming the renewal of National's Roads of National Significance programme.  The Government's draft transport plan features a half-a-billion dollar pothole prevention fund and 15 new major roads.   It'll be funded in part by a $25 dollar increase to vehicle registration fees in each of the next two years.  CEO Nick Leggett told Kerre Woodham that the previous Government initiated just one new road in six years, so we were left with nothing in the pipeline.   He says we need these roads; they've connected people for millennia and will continue to.  Leggett says even as we de-carbonise, we are still going to need them, and they need to be of a higher quality.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.