Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

• Christopher Luxon: Prime Minister talks charities, infrastructure, nursing shortage

  Hints from the Prime Minister around upcoming changes to charities and taxes. Christopher Luxon told Kerre Woodham the Goverment's speaking about whether people are "rorting the system" and taking advantage of charities registration. He says he spoke with Finance and Economic Growth Minister, Nicola Willis, about the matter just yesterday. Luxon told Woodham some organisations present as a charity but maybe aren't doing charitable work. He's telling people to keep their eyes on the Budget - around taxation and charity status. The Prime Minister's also calling for some nurses to take on roles outside hospitals to ease burden on the system. Christopher Luxon admitted we've got a lot of nurses coming through the system, but don't always have places for them in hospitals. Luxon told Kerre Woodham we desperately need them in primary and aged care, and in some cases, it takes weeks to get a GP appointment. He says there's an opportunity to think about how we use our nurses - like nurse practitioners who can increasingly do the work a GP does. The Prime Minister's also keen to reach across the political aisle in a bid to secure a bipartisan approach to infrastructure. Luxon revealed he's been in conversation with Labour's finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds, who's supportive of elements of the Government's infrastructure pipeline plan. Luxon told Woodham that for the Government to actually get things done when it comes to the country's infrastructure problems, a bipartisan solution must be found. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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  35:01
• Kerre Woodham: Do you believe things are getting better?

  Before I came upstairs to work, I called into the coffee shop downstairs, as is my want. Coffee Theory is run by a husband and wife family team and is a small business. We were talking about the fact that Christopher Luxon will be in tomorrow, and I said “have you got a question?” And Penny said “When will things get better? I know they're supposed to be, but when will things get better? I just wish they'd get better faster”. And that's kind of what we were talking about in the wake of the polls showing the Coalition party support slipping. People do believe things are getting a bit better, but they want it to happen faster. Perhaps with the OCR falling by 50 points, as was widely expected by economists, things will start to look up. The floating rates dropped, some banks have dropped their loan term interest rates. And although the floating rate is more directly affected by the OCR, the long-term loan interest rates that are set by the banks are affected by other things like term deposits, and world events, and the like. Banks have been put on notice by Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr to sharpen their pencils, and they've been told in no uncertain terms to come up with better rates for their customers. “The banks need to do better. They need to look at their own margins and chase and compete for customers much more vigorously. Their funding costs are being challenged because, you know the official cash rate is only one of the variables that go into what they have to pay when they're borrowing money to on-lend, but the margin is also sitting there at a very healthy level, so one would hope that when the competition, when people come back to the market, which they're doing in dribs and drabs now, competition is alive.” That was Adrian Orr on the Mike Hosking Breakfast. And it is true. Once mortgage rates have been set, or loans have been set, and the interest rate for borrowing that money is a little bit lower, then there isn't as much that you have to pay, so there's a little bit leftover in your back pocket once the bills have been paid. And thus, the noose around the necks of so many homeowners and business owners will start to loosen. Already, some sectors have recovered, come back from the very brink. Federated Farmers says farmer confidence has risen to its highest level in more than a decade, rebounding from record lows. It couldn't have got much worse for our farming communities. Remember that lovely man that rang in? I can't even remember how long ago... he was the first caller, and he spoke with such passion and with such heartfelt pain about the despair so many farmers felt as the result of being vilified for what they did. For being on the receiving end of legislation that made it nigh impossible to do their job, and yet without them, we would be completely and utterly and royally stuffed. But he was too fearful of saying what he did. Rather than saying proudly, I’m a farmer, he just didn't feel he could say that. He didn't have any confidence at all that he would get a fair or civil reception. And that prompted an avalanche of calls from those in the farming community, young and old, who felt very much the same. So when they say it was at record lows, I heard it. Now, they say farmer confidence has risen to its highest level in more than a decade. The latest Farm Confidence survey shows that falling interest rates, rising incomes, and more favourable farming rules have played a major role in the improvement. And they say that's a significant shift in the mood of rural New Zealand. Thank heavens for that and not before time. Hopefully farmers can take a big deep breath, you might actually be getting some sleep at night and you can look forward to the future with a little bit of confidence. What other sectors are seeing that – it just farming? Is tourism feeling the same kind of confidence, the same optimism? I imagine for retailers you might need to wait for the flow and effect of lower mortgage interest rates. But I'd be really interested to see where you are in terms of your confidence, in terms of your belief, that things are getting better and that things will be better in the short term, within the next 6 months, that things will be looking up. The farmers are feeling it, they're feeling confident. They’ve seen what lower interest rates and reasonable fair legislation can do. What about you? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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  7:06
• Kerre Woodham: We need a definitive answer to if data was misused

  I don't think this counts as breaking news, does it? An inquiry ordered by the Prime Minister has identified significant failures with public agencies’ protection of New Zealanders’ personal information and management of conflict of interests. The investigation, which focused on public agencies actions, was sparked by allegations last year that data provided to health and social services providers at Manurewa Marae for the census and for Covid-19 vaccinations was misused. Those murmurings were rumbling for some time before the investigation was sparked. It was claimed personal information was improperly used to favour Te Pati Māori and the Māori electorate of Tamaki Makaurau. The allegations have been denied, but the Government wanted assurances that Kiwis’ data had been properly safeguarded. Spoiler alert, it wasn't. Among the findings of the report is that the Ministry of Health and Health New Zealand did not have control over data once it was downloaded by providers, had no means for ensuring providers were meeting contractual expectations, and had no safeguards for managing potential conflicts of interest. This really doesn't come as any surprise to me at all. Stats New Zealand was found to have insufficient arrangements to protect the shared data. The findings are so serious for Stats NZ that chief executive Mark Sowden has fallen on his sword and will leave at the end of his current term, something public services Commissioner Sir Brian Roche says is the right thing to do. Waipareira Trust chief executive and president of Te Pati Māori John Tamihere on the other hand, is defending the use of data at Manurewa Marae, saying there's no evidence of any wrongdoing. He says they're being targeted for being Māori, a Māori organisation attracting extra scrutiny over suspicions that Māori were somehow crooked. He said whistle blowers had not been able to provide evidence that data was actually misused. He said every political party used data and Waipareira Trust, which had existed for 40 years, had built up huge data sets. He denied that the census data from government agencies that had been shared with the Manurewa Marae was then handed over to Te Pati Māori. Labour leader Chris Hipkins on Three News last night seemed to suggest that he himself had raised eyebrows but would wait the findings of the police investigation. “I've certainly felt that the election in that seat was unfair and the result in that seat was unfair. I think the fact that our polling booth was held at the Manurewa Marae with very active Māori party presence really did draw into question the result there. It was such a close result.” Just to remind you of the result in the electorate of Tamaki Makaurau, Maurewa Marae CEO and Te Pāti Māori's representative Takutai Tarsh Kemp took the seat from Labour's Peeni Henare by four votes, just four. On recount, that went to 42 votes, because naturally, Peeni Henare said “I’ve held that seat since 2014. I find it very hard to believe I could have lost it. Oh, hang on a minute, no I don't.” Should there be a by-election? If Te Pati Māori believes they won the seat fair and square, that Labour was being rolled in plenty of other long held seats, would their member be willing to put it to the test in a by-election? Where there’s absolutely no hint of wrongdoing on behalf of her party, that here we are fair and square, let's go mano o mano, go head-to-head and let's see who wins at this time. I mean, I suppose the horses bolted. If the data has been misused, and at the moment there are no individuals you can point the didgeridoo at and say they misused that information, but there is a police investigation ongoing. There is no clear evidence that could go before a court, that the data was misused. But if it looks like a rat, smells like a rat, and it's got a long tail like a rat, it does make you raise your eyebrows. You need a definitive answer: was the data misused or not? At the moment we have suspicions, we have rumblings. And while those rumblings continue, then it puts the whole judicial process and the whole electoral process in doubt. I mean, you look at the CEO of Manurewa Marae winning the seat and you think really, did she? Was it fair and square? I don't know. Labour was being rolled left, right and centre. She might just have got lucky. I smell rats. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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  5:55
• Kerre Woodham: Is relocating the only solution for flooding towns?

  Remember late last year we were talking about the proposal to move Westport. The West Coast town has been repeatedly inundated by flooding since European settlement, but that's escalated in recent years. The Buller River flooded the town regularly - July 2021's Flood was particularly devastating. A draft master plan proposed relocating the town to farmland southwest of its current location, and we talked to one of the locals involved in planning the move, which isn't happening today, and it's not happening tomorrow but as part of a long-term relocation. We knew houses or commercial buildings need to be built. They won't be built on existing sites in the Township, but on the new land. So build it and they will come. Now another Township is bowing to the inevitable. The report has found that there is no viable long-term solution to prevent the frequent flooding of Kumeu, which is a gorgeous semi-rural township in northwest Auckland. As Rodney Local Board member Guy Wishart put it, there is no cavalry coming to save the town. He lost his Kumeu home in the 2023 floods and has moved to Helensville. The report outlined a history of flooding in Kumeu-Huapai stretching back to 1926. Since then, there have been five notable floods and more recently, floods in August 2021 and two floods in 2023. The report looked at possible solutions other than relocation. One of them was a $163 million dam upstream from the township, which, if it failed, “would have catastrophic impacts”, causing significant damage and risks to life. Well yes, if it failed, but you don't build dams expecting them to do so. And I think if you're saying it's $163 million, you can probably add another half of that on top. But according to local body councillors, there's no real alternative but to look at a managed retreat, relocate the town centre to an appropriate location, and for the council not to consent buildings and flood zones – which sounds like a no brainer, but it's happening everywhere. Why would you be building on a flood zone where it's flooded and flooded and flooded again? The floods are nothing new, according to those who've lived in the area their whole lives. There was a great story in the Kumeu Courier where they spoke to a local and looked at the history of the floods. After the large floods in 1924 and 1926, the almost annual floods in Kumeu Township compelled the then Ministry of Works to use depression labour to build a stock bank on farmland South of the Kumeu River Bridge, which is still needed and still clearly visible today according to the Courier. A local, who was a boy in the floods, said in 2021, the rainfall was 190 millimetres in 14 hours, but back in 1954 in the big flood he remembered, the rainfall was 150 millimetres in 5 1/2 hours. It was like a wall of water. And after the March 1954 floods, locals said, oh well, we're not going to see the like of that again. Six months later it rained for three days and three nights and created a second large flood in the same year. So things are not going to suddenly get better. If anything, it will only get worse. But what do you do when you've bought a house there, you're raising your family there, you've been through a couple of floods already, and you’re being told that the only possible solution is eventual relocation? How do you manage to spend your days there, knowing that every time it rains, you're going to be feeling sick? Knowing that long term you're going to have to leave your land, your home, your business behind? Is relocation the only possible solution as far as you can see, especially if you have lived there for some time? I'd really like to get your thoughts on this and for all of those towns, because this is not the only town, this is not the only settlement that is facing the issue of dealing with weather events that have always happened, there's a history of them happening, and they're only going to get more frequent overtime. Yes, the Council shouldn't have consented back in the day - they did. And we are where we are now. People who have homes, who have businesses who have livelihoods on land that ultimately is going to be covered in water. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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  5:46
• Greg Sayers: Rodney Councillor on Auckland Council's plans to mitigate flooding in Kumeū, moving the town centre

  Kumeū wants to move. Auckland Council's laid out its plan for Kumeū to try to mitigate the impacts of flooding. Although they had three ideas for mitigation, the council's found no viable solution to the town's history of floods, as none of the options would drop the flood levels by 1 meter as needed. About 200 people attended a public meeting in Auckland's northwest last night to discuss the issue. Rodney Councillor Greg Sayers says those attending want a plan to move the town's centre. He says they also committed to creating stronger rules to prevent people building houses in flood zones. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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  9:05

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