Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

General practices around New Zealand are still overwhelmed, thanks to a shortage of doctors and a influx of patients.
Dr John Armstrong returned to general medicine after seven years of retirement as the practice, taken over by his daughter, was overwhelmed with demand.
With more than 6,500 patients on the books, the wait time for a routine GP visit was around four months.
Armstrong told Kerre Woodham GPs up and down the country are doing 15-20 minute consultations, but it's difficult when you have so many patients to deal with the multitude of problems people come in with..
He says if people are on a waitlist for three or four months, they often come in with a list of issues.
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Michael Laws. It should come as absolutely no surprise that he has shown his colours, he's shown them time and time again. When Winston Peters was in studio with me when we were doing the leaders discussions and you were phoning in and asking questions of the leaders, I thought I'd said it to him on air, but I must have said in a commercial break after I'd talked about the sort of calibre of the candidates and I said to Winston, "Michael Laws, what on earth are you doing with him?" Winston looked a bit surprised and said, "No, he's very intelligent. What's wrong with Michael? Very intelligent." I said, "He's awful, he's. No, I don't think he's going to be an asset to you. Oh, no, no." And the thing about Winston is he is very loyal, he and Michael Laws go way back, but I could not understand the rationale. Are there not enough candidates of sufficient calibre wanting to stand for New Zealand First? Why on earth would you bring Michael Laws back into the fold unless you were myopically loyal to somebody with whom you'd had a long-standing professional relationship?
And what do you know? Just a few short days later, he's proving a problem for New Zealand First and a distraction, a major distraction. I know we live in a world where you can have a US president who boasts about grabbing women by the pussy, but still, that's the US. We don't have to follow suit. Winston Peters told Ryan Bridge this morning that they haven't had time as a party to decide what they're going to do about Laws, they'll deal with that after the election.
WP: It's careless, it's not thinking the issues through and thinking out loud is a silly way to behave, especially if you're a candidate for a party in an election. And it's all of those things and worse. So we've just made it very clear to Michael how we feel about it. The party's brassed off, the women in the party are very annoyed because they've done so much work to get this party where it is.
RB: After Stuart Nash?
WP: Well, you know, Stuart Nash was never. When he made the comments he wasn't an approved candidate, so it was not difficult to deal with.
RB: Right.
WP: I'm going to make sure that the party's fully aware of all the circumstances of this and the moment this election's over, but we are flat out with two days to go in a campaign. Is it a serious difficulty or is it a handicap in what we're trying to do? Of course it is. It's all of those things and we are brassed off the beat the band, make no bones about it.
I'm glad he didn't try and minimise it because the dichotomy is that you have Winston Peters as leader of the party and whatever criticisms I have of Winston, he is a chivalrous man. I do not believe for a second he would make the sort of comment that Michael Laws did or the previous candidate Stuart Nash has made about women, not even in private, he wouldn't even think those thoughts. And yet his party attracts men who seem to have extremely odd views of women. Michael Laws' sexualising of women in the Opportunity Party, which was gross, comes on top of Stuart Nash's comments about his former opponent in Napier taking parental leave and also his crude definition of a woman, let's not forget that. And Ron Mark's linking the sinking of the Manawanui, which was captained by a woman, to the appalling diversity in the New Zealand Defence Force.
Thomas Coughlan has written an excellent piece in the Herald this morning and as he says, this shouldn't rattle what people think of New Zealand First. It has always been scandal prone and like the lost boys without Wendy, has always been a home for candidates, often male, who have a habit of saying outrageous, often offensive things. Lost boys without Wendy, excellent line. But it's true. I mean, here you've got and that's what the dichotomy is, that's what's so dichotomous. You've got Winston Peters, who is a gentleman. You can, and I have, fulminate against all sorts of things that he does, but he's never crude. I don't believe for a second he thinks women are just sex bits or lazy cows for taking parental leave or whatever, and yet this is what the party attracts.
And he is going to have to deal with Michael Laws after the election because these are the comments from the party leaders. Christopher Luxon: "He will not be a minister in my government," referring to Michael Laws. Chlöe Swarbrick: "It's just gross." Yes, it is. "He's from another era, he should go back to Noah and the Ark," Nicola Willis. Barbara Edmonds said, "Women have a place in politics, we have a place in leadership. The fact that we have three finance spokespeople who are wāhine shows that women have a place here. We should be respected as opposed to being talked down to." And Qiulae Wong, "He makes my skin crawl," which sums it up beautifully.
But still, I have never voted for New Zealand First and I can't imagine doing so. Stranger things have happened and hopefully I've got a few elections left in me, but I've never voted New Zealand First, so what I think doesn't really matter. It's not going to affect my vote and it's certainly not going to affect my opinion of Laws because it's pretty much what I thought of him before he made the comments, he's done it before, he'll undoubtedly do it again. But it makes me wonder, is there a place in politics for this sort of party? Are there people who yearn for the days where women were just two tits and a pussy? Is there a cohort of people who think that? Maybe so. I don't know any of them, it doesn't mean they don't exist. I mean, how could you possibly have somebody like that in politics?
It is going to be a problem for New Zealand First the way I see it, but as I say, never voted for them and it's not going to change my vote. Will it change yours? If you're a New Zealand First supporter, do you scratch your head about the candidate selection? And if you are leaning towards New Zealand First, does this change your opinion whatsoever or do you still think it's basically a Winston Peters party, you love Winston, he would never say anything like that, so therefore your vote goes to Winston?
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Politicians are being urged to adopt stronger electric vehicle incentives ahead of the election.
Climate and energy advocacy group Rewiring Aotearoa is arguing that EVs are one of the most effective long-term solutions for rising transport and energy costs.
They're promoting an EV Salary Boost proposal, which would allow workers to access EVs through pre-tax salary arrangements – similarly to already existing schemes in the UK and Australia.
Policy and Government Relations Spokesperson Ngaio Neumegen told Kerre Woodham that even with the rising cost of power, it's still cheaper to run an EV than a car running on imported fuel.
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It looks like EVs are having a hot girl summer. They first had their time to shine when the previous Labour Government brought in subsidies for New Zealanders to buy EVs. In July 2021, the very first month that the rebate scheme kicked in, overall EV sales increased by more than 200% depending on the specific brand and model. Pure electric and hybrid light vehicle new regos nearly quadrupled to 1,944 units in July '21, compared to just 521 the previous month. Look what happens when you give people free money – they use it. At the peak of the subsidy scheme, battery powered EV market share rose from less than 4% of new light vehicle registrations in January 2022 —so less than 4%— to just over 20% by December 2022. It was big.
Conversely, when the National-led Coalition Government axed the clean car discount at the end of December '23, or to put it another way, asked the purchasers of cars to pay for them themselves rather than expecting a subsidy from the taxpayer, new EV sales sharply dropped from 20% of market share to less than 10%. Now though, we're seeing another surge in popularity of EVs, this time driven by buyers, not by free money, given the high price of fuel. EV regos rose sharply last month, up 174.1% on this time last year.
Now Rewiring New Zealand wants to see either of the Chrisses, Luxon or Hipkins, offer an EV salary boost policy based on similar schemes in the UK and Australia. Rewiring NZ said petrol is the largest upward contributor to the inflation rate, and when we're looking at ways of easing the cost of living on households, EVs is one of the biggest ways to go. If you're not paying for petrol, then that's $150-odd in your pocket straight away. The EV salary boost is a policy that would let employees lease a new or used electric vehicle using pretax salary deductions, similar to Australia's scheme. Lease costs, the vehicle, the insurance, and maintenance are deducted from an employee's gross before tax pay, so that lowers their taxable income.
Rewiring Aotearoa, who's putting a very positive spin on it, says workers could save an average of $36 a week compared to a standard car loan, and then there's the petrol, and second hand market supply would improve because after the three to five year lease ends, the vehicles enter the second hand market and that makes it more affordable for other motorists who might not be eligible for the employee lease scheme. Do we have to pay for it? Yes, we do. Yes, we do. Proponents estimate the income tax reduction costs the Government roughly $5,000 per vehicle.
But you know when politicians, and Chris Hipkins was specifically asked this when he was on with me between, they're asked how are you going to ease the cost of living? How are you going to make life easier for households who have to pay rates and insurance and mortgages or rents and food and petrol? Well, says Rewiring Aotearoa, Rewiring New Zealand, here's a way you could do it almost immediately. Reduce the upward pressure on inflation and ease the cost of buying petrol and the maintenance and the like on employees. Doesn't cover the self-employed and the small businesses, but then I guess you can claim back vehicle costs when you submit your tax forms at the end of the year, tax returns at the end of the year.
What do you think of it as an idea? This was a question that was asked of Chris Hipkins: how? How will you ease the cost of living for your average household? He said public transport, capping public transport fares. What else did he say? I think that was it. Capping public transport fares. Rates were too hard, insurance was too hard, food was too hard. So this is a way of doing it. For those who took advantage of the Government's, the previous Labour Government's clean cars discount, you must be laughing all the way to your electric charge in the middle of town. How many of you have decided to go the EV way? You were on the fence, but then the price of fuel went astronomically high, and you thought to yourself, no, now's the time to do it.
Is there more choice and more range? Just looking at the different utes and work vehicles available, more and more of them seem to be coming onto the market as hybrids or EVs. But then you also look at Ford, who's reporting billions of dollars in losses in their EV division. Many of them have shelved plans to make workhorses that operate on electric motors. Is there more range for you to have a look at when it comes to finding a workhorse for your business? And would this be something you'd be interested in? If your boss says to you, all right, well you won't get as much money in your pocket, but you will get brand new EV for the term of your employment.
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Elections at home and abroad may have a played a part in the latest rise in the number of people out of work.
Unemployment's hit 5.7%, up from 5.6% three months ago.
The unexpected rise has coincided with an increase in casual and fixed-term roles, and a move towards more part-time employment.
Infometrics Principal Economist Brad Olsen told Kerre Woodham businesses appear to be holding off on making decisions.
He says they want to see both what happens in our election, but also how the mid-terms affects the war in Iran and global fuel prices.
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