Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive

Now, just for the avoidance of doubt, let me tell you what happened here with this mistake that led to 30,000 people missing out on Winter Energy Payments and benefits.
It happened because Louise Upston passed a piece of legislation so fast, under urgency, in just two days last year that no one had time to spot the fact the law contained a mistake.
What happened was that the law required MSD, the ministry, to check with people every year that they were still entitled to the money they were receiving. However, it didn't exclude pensioners and veterans receiving the Winter Energy Payment, which they get simply because they are pensioners and veterans.
Of course, they should have been excluded under those circumstances because, once you're a pensioner, you're a pensioner. You're not going to stop being a pensioner; you'll be a pensioner until you die. Once you're a veteran, you're a veteran until you die. It doesn't change.
So they should have been exempt from this law but they weren't because it went through the parliamentary process too quickly.
This actually happens quite a lot. A few years ago, under urgency, Parliament realised that it had tabled and voted through the wrong piece of legislation because proceedings were moving so fast.
It happens all the time.
This Government has used urgency a lot. Jacinda Ardern's Government used urgency a lot as well. They often do it because they're running out of time but sometimes it's because they want to avoid too much attention being focused on what they're doing for an extended period.
That's why, for example, National tabled and rushed through the Pay Equity Bill. They didn't want all the drama that would have come with people focusing on it for a long time.
But they've been warned that, if they do this, the consequence of rushing legislation through is that mistakes may go unnoticed and therefore never get fixed.
In this case, it's been particularly unfortunate because it has affected some of the most hard-up people in the country at the worst time of year: people relying on the pension and trying to heat their homes during winter.
That is a really hard lesson for political parties on why they should not rush laws.
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On the Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive with Andrew Dickens Full Show Podcast for Friday, 11 September, 2026, Immigration Minister Erica Stanford takes a swipe at Winston Peters as campaigning heats up.
We hear about what it'll take to save Orana Wildlife Park in Christchurch.
A powerful voice in the "front row club", Sean Fitzpatrick, gives us his view on Codie Taylor's reinstatement as All Blacks hooker and captain.
And on The Sports Huddle, Andrew Gourdie and Nathan Limm on whether the Wahs are on the up and up.
Get the Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive Full Show Podcast every weekday evening on iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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The All Blacks will face off against the Springboks in their fourth test on Sunday, September 13, at 9am with the hopes of bringing the score to 2-2.
"It'd be nice to be able to draw the series, which will be a lot better feeling," Former All Blacks hooker and captain Sean Fitzpatrick told Andrew Dickens.
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It's a massive weekend for Auckland as the much-awaited CRL, the City Rail Link, finally opens to the public. And there is excitement. Five and a half billion dollars and 10 years of chaos have come to this. The question will be asked: was it all worth it?
Firstly, I have to say it never needed to be so expensive because it never needed to be this late. The idea of a rail link between Auckland and Morningside was first mooted in 1912 and again in 1918. There was even a plan drawn up in 1923. Robbie, Dove-Myer Robinson, talked about it in the 1970s. But it wasn't until 2003 that we finally pulled our finger out and started doing something about it.
Imagine if we'd built it in the 1920s. Imagine if we'd built it in the 1930s, when Australia was building underground rail and the Harbour Bridge. But no, we were afraid of it. We hesitated. If only we'd had the courage of our convictions back then, when it was cheaper and easier.
And it's not like we've always been this timid and overly cautious. Construction of the Central Motorway Junction, affectionately known as Spaghetti Junction, began in the 1960s. If you think the disruption caused by the CRL was significant, consider what happened then. To build Spaghetti Junction for the car, they effectively eradicated an entire inner-city suburb. Yet these days we lose our heads over a couple of inner-city streets, a few barber shops and some traffic cones.
My own memories of the debate are full of toxic misinformation and, can I say, that came from all the radio stations and plenty of politicians. People were calling it a loop. It's never been a loop. It's a link. It's a through-link.
People would say, "Well, it's a loop. What about the Simpsons monorail? What about the Sydney monorail?" But it was never anything like that. It was a link. It joined two previously disconnected parts of a railway network we'd already invested in.
Those myths made much of the conversation unnecessarily fraught. But there we go. It's happened. It's done. Thank God for that.
Now that it's finished, people will be demanding a revolution. It won't be a revolution. It will be an evolution. But it is the single biggest step we had to take to allow our biggest city to grow even bigger. It's what we needed to do to show we're not afraid of growth. That we're not the timid New Zealanders Christopher Luxon has so often accused us of being, and that our businesses are not afraid of growth either.
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Firefighters from the New York City Fire Department flew out to New Zealand to do the Sky Tower walk today to commemorate the 343 firefighters who were killed 25 years ago on September 11th, 2001.
New York firefighter Dave Morkal was on ground zero that day, and he joined Andrew Dickens to discuss.
"As soon as we got there it was work is on. This is what we have to do. We have to save as many people as we can."
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