Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

So that's it then, at least until the next time. Christopher Luxon and his camp stared down the would-be challengers to his leadership, and he lives to fight another election. What happens after that is anybody's guess – win or lose. Chris Penk, the stalking horse, paid the price for calling a confidence motion, stripped of his ministerial portfolios, kicked down to the bottom of the backbenches to sit in purgatory, and he's announced he'll retire from politics at the election. There are all sorts of reckons about who he was acting for, who was really behind the coup, why it failed, and no doubt that will keep the political journos and the Wellington cabal in a lather for the next few weeks to come.
But the end result is, despite all the fevered speculation, another challenge to the Prime Minister's leadership was mounted and another challenge was bested. What a sorry, sorry state of affairs. Credit to the Prime Minister for having the cojones to stare down the perfidious ne'er do wells within his own caucus. He doesn't have to do the job, he doesn't need to do the job, yet he was determined to stick it out and finish the job in his own time and in his own way. Credit too to him for keeping excellent ministers where they are doing good work, when surely a dark deep recess of his heart must wish there was still the ability to hang, draw, and quarter traitors. Would have taken a big deep breath and then move on. The ministers are doing good work for New Zealanders while undermining their boss and their party, and to be able to set aside an entirely understandable desire for vengeance shows real maturity and leadership.
But where does it leave erstwhile National voters? Quite clearly the caucus is full of liars and traitors and grasping opportunists, no different I suppose to most other political parties, but it doesn't make me feel great voting for them. I know I should accept that this is politics, but why? You wouldn't put up with that in friendships, you wouldn't put up with that in your own workplace. Why do you have to accept undermining, duplicitous, two faced, pledging loyalty with one hand, hugging with one hand while the other hand holds the knife? I find it despicable. Is loyalty an old-fashioned virtue? I wouldn't have thought so. Anyway, why should people be able to get away with pledging their loyalty, telling the public, “Oh yes look, we're absolutely behind the leader," only to be found to be actively undermining both the leader and the party? And what sort of thinking are you getting if a significant cabal within National thinks it's a great idea to roll a leader who is leading a party that could form a government 90 days before the election?
It hardly shows the brains trust, does it? To have a group of people going, “Hey, I know, why don't we roll the leader of our party and the Prime Minister 90 days before an election? That'll really get people on side." What a waste of time, what a waste of money and what an absolute bloody gift to Labour.
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Do you know what? While those self-serving destructive quislings in Wellington are doing their very best to lose the election at the caucus meeting this morning, specially called, do you know who's not meeting? 40 mayors and councillors who were supposed to be attending a signing ceremony of a regional deal between the government, the Queenstown Lakes District Council, the Otago Regional Council and the Central Otago District Council. This is good work. This is perhaps not sexy work, but it's sound, sensible work that's going on, that's going to make life better for the ratepayers of these regions. It was all set to be signed at 10:30am, but now it won't because senior ministers can't attend. And why can't they attend? Because a group of traitorous idiots are attempting to roll the Prime Minister again.
That just underlines how arrogant and ignorant these small minded, perfidious group of Nats are. Because they are terrified of losing their accommodation allowances, their travel allowances, their home security allowance, their jacked up Super, terrified of having to find a real job 90 days before an election. They're trying to roll a Prime Minister who at the latest poll was leading a party that was ahead and a party that had every chance of winning an election with a group of centre-right other parties. If there was any last one of us who thought that politicians were there to serve the people, surely this self-serving, self-seeking, self-aggrandising group of Nats has put that idea to the sword.
If National had no chance of getting back in, if the leader of the Nats had committed an egregious crime à la McSkimming, if he'd been accused of something truly vile, then sure, get rid of him, utterly grounds for getting rid of him. But to get rid of him because he's not snazzy enough? Not glib enough? Not vibey enough, hasn't got the feels? Knows too much and wants to share it? They think Chris Bishop is snazzy? What a pack of fools.
I do not know where my vote will go if the cohort of Nats within the party are stupid enough to roll their boss. If they prevail, they're people who simply cannot be trusted, their word is not good. I know men and women who can do million-dollar deals on the shake of a hand and a word. They are good people, they are sound people and they're the ones getting dicked around by these traitorous, duplicitous liars. “We back our leader," said Chris Bishop yesterday while testing the sharpness of his blade. Erica Stanford four days ago told journalists that they were interviewing their typewriters and that she's behind Luxon while the bagman Penk is alleged to have done the numbers. Ugly, ugly, ugly stuff.
If Luxon prevails today, and I really hope he does, Chris Bishop should be relegated straight to the bottom of the list and consigned to history. Christopher Luxon came in and did a jolly good job of uniting a party that was a shambles. It was in absolute disarray. Simon Bridges was dumped, replaced by Todd Muller who retired hurt and then Judith Collins got the hospital pass and then into the 2020 election in which National were decimated. They had to rebuild from the ashes, and Christopher Luxon helped them do that.
He might not have the jazz hands, but he had faith in good ministers, let them get on with their work, held them to account. What do they do with their renewed strength, the Nats? They disembowel themselves and eat their own entrails, which makes for really unpleasant viewing. For the lefty voters, oh, you must be thinking this is better than any Netflix drama right now. Grab the popcorn and watch it all unfold and who can blame you? This is an own goal of seismic proportions. If a small group of destructive Nats are responsible for the collapse of the centre right vote and Labour, the Greens, Te Pāti Māori and the Opportunity party gets in, we should make a new crime and charge those snivelling quislings with economic treason.
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As debate continues about Luxon's political future following last week's MMP reform comments, there's growing discussion about whether a referendum is needed.
In a piece in Newsroom, Otago University political commentator Dr Michael Swanson argues MMP has delivered fairer representation and coalition Governments are doing exactly what proportional representation was designed to do.
He joined Kerre Woodham to outline New Zealand's possible options amid the ongoing election season.
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Well, this Orewa development's giving fast-track consenting a very bad name, isn't it? I am absolutely gobsmacked. I am no property developer, but I would have thought you wouldn't apply to put up hundreds and hundreds of houses before you had, if you’ll excuse me, your shit together, quite literally. The decision to greenlight a 1,217 home development on the outskirts of Orewa has attracted heavy criticism from the Auckland mayor, the council, local residents, and just about everybody you speak to. And deservedly so. Vineway Limited plans to build the homes, a commercial area, two neighbourhood parks, some ecological areas to tick the box, and construct a State Highway 1 interchange. All very admirable, but where's the wastewater pipes? And the water pipes full stop. Lovely to have a little ecological area where you can rediscover a sparkling skink, but what about the pipes?
There isn't the capacity from Watercare to deliver water, get rid of the waste for the more than a thousand homes in the commercial space. Watercare has made it abundantly clear that it cannot connect any services to the site before 2033, potentially 2050, so why in heaven's name would you allow a housing development of this size to go ahead? We've been there, we've done that, it doesn't work. Two years ago, Watercare was trucking sewage from new housing developments while infrastructure was being built to cope with the waste. But they said two years ago this wasn't working. It was expensive, it was smelly, it was complex. So they said no, we're not going to approve any new resource consents that require an interim wastewater solution. And they did oppose this Orewa one.
Back at the time they were talking about servicing Cardinal West, a housing development on a former dairy farm. There were 300 homes there, in the first stage they were planning 417 odd. There were 300 homes, and to service those 300 homes Watercare had to make 90 trips a week to remove the sewage. 90 for 300 homes. How many trips would it take to get rid of the waste from 1,217 homes? Can I remind you too, because this is why it's so incomprehensible; if this was a first where you had a housing developer saying, “Hey, I know we haven't got any pipes to connect to the water infrastructure and the wastewater infrastructure, and I know we won't get them till about 2050 but what about we truck water in and take the treated sewage away?" And if that was the first time it had been suggested, you might think, “Well, that sounds half baked, but nonetheless let's give it a go, let's not be negative Nancys, let's just, we need housing." Look at them. It doesn't work. That's why Watercare said no.
And can I remind you of Auckland's Whitford Manor, described by planners as a cautionary tale of what can go wrong when developers build houses in areas where public water pipes have yet to reach. Spelling it out for the property developers out there. Over the years, every plan for a private wastewater system at Whitford Manor collapsed. A deal to pipe waste across a neighbouring golf course fell through, shock me. And a backup plan to dump it in a nearby creek was killed in the High Court by conservationists and iwi, and I don't blame them. It didn't work 150 years ago, we're still dealing with the problems of just using natural waterways to dump our crap into and our arsenic and our poisons from the factories. Look at the creeks around Grey Lynn, they're still recovering.
So what in God's name are we doing in Orewa? Watercare held up Whitford Manor's failure as one of the reasons to object to other housing projects trying to build outside the public network. We've been there. We've seen that it can go wrong. Everybody's opposed to it, apart from the developers, who, you can take your ecological area and your indigenous skink and shove it up your jacksy because until you've got the infrastructure that's necessary, you're creating a recipe for disaster and you won't be clearing it up. You won't be, because like Whitford Manor you'll just go tits up and bankrupt and off you go. And guess who's left cleaning up your waste, your mess? We are, the ratepayers, the taxpayers. No, no, no, no. If this is an example of the fast-track consenting process, it's a big fat fail from me.
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A developer says controversy around a housing build near Orewa in north Auckland should prompt a rethink.
The 1200 home Delmore development —now fast-track-approved— can't be connected to wastewater infrastructure until at least 2033.
Waste will have to be trucked out.
Urban Planning Specialist Hamish Firth told Kerre Woodham it highlights a lack of support for infrastructure providers.
He says we need to be getting this infrastructure into areas where housing is likely to go.
However, Firth says the land has been zoned for housing since 2016 – so maybe Watercare should have planned for it in future work.
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