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  • Kerre Woodham: E-scooters, cycle lanes, and public demand

    Kerre Woodham: E-scooters, cycle lanes, and public demand
    2025/11/27
    The Government's move to shift e-scooter users from the sidewalk to bike lanes is being hailed as a win for common sense. Shame it's not coming in before the Christmas party season. ACC stats for e-scooter injuries this year are close to surpassing $14 million. Now, I don't believe that's because e-scooters are inherently dangerous. They're very easy to ride, very stable. I am willing to bet a significant proportion of those injuries happened after 10:00 at night on a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, when the rider was pissed as a parrot and there were three to a scooter, tooting their hooter. Putting e-scooter riders into cycle lanes isn't going to stop them falling off their perches, but it might protect innocent passers-by and pedestrians. National MP for Tukituki, Catherine Wedd, says the rules around where people were allowed to ride e-scooters were outdated and dangerous, and the government had work underway to change it. Flamingo Scooters co-creator Jackson Love told Mike Hosking that it clears up confusion. He says bike lanes are clearly lot safer than the road, and it also helps keep footpaths clear for pedestrians. And the cycling action spokesperson Patrick Morgan agreed, as he told Ryan Bridge on Early Edition this morning. PM: This is long overdue. It makes sense for this to happen. Pedestrians really don't want e-scooters on the footpath, and often our streets can be quite hostile for people. So, it makes sense to put e-scooters on bike lanes. But we're going to need a lot more bike lanes, aren't we? RB: How many more bike lanes do you reckon we need? PM: We don't need a bike lane on every street. No one's asking for that. What we need is bike lanes on busy streets where people want to go, so to get people to our schools, workplaces, shops. There's a there's a trend in modern cities for people to get around by bike, e-bike, and scooter. So, I think councils and the government need to restart building bike lanes to meet public demand. It would be interesting to know what that public demand is, given that cycle lanes are not swollen and congested. You do not see long, lengthy queues on cycle lanes. There are some that are better patronised than others. But there is clearly a heck of a lot more room for people on scooters, for people on bikes, for people on skateboards, for people on bloody horses to use the cycle lanes because they are not at capacity now. I love a cycle lane. I love cycling. But it's some cyclists I'm less keen on. They want cycle lanes and they want them in most places, and I would love a cycle lane from my home to work. So I could get to and from work over the bridge on a fine day. I want to be able to use my car if it's raining or the bus. But I'd love to be able to cycle safely without aggressive nasty drivers taking aim at me. But cyclists want cycle lanes and more of them, but they also want to be able to use the road when it suits them too. The man mules say they want to, they're way too fast to go into cycle lanes, mate. You should see the clicks I can get up to on my bike. They don't go into the cycle lanes because they're too fast and they say it's dangerous. So they need to be on the road and everybody needs to look out for them. And despite the fact that there's a beautiful cycle lane that's been built on Meola Road in Auckland, and you could probably substitute Meola Road for just about any road in any city around New Zealand. There's a beautiful cycle lane there, wide, safe, glorious. But my lovely producer Helen came to work quite discombobulated because she'd had to slow down to go behind a lady commuter on her electric bike who was adjacent to the cycle lane, in the middle of the road, pootling along, not quite at the same speed as the traffic, but and there was a yawning, vast, empty cycle lane right next to where the lady cyclist was. There are special bike lights to let cyclists know where it's safe to go and when they need to stop. Yesterday I was coming up Franklin Road in Auckland, again substitute any road in any city, and there's a lovely cycle lane there, and there were three cyclists on it from bottom to top, which is great. And the first cyclist got the green light, the green little cyclist, so through they went. That changed to red by the time the second cyclist got up. Did that deter them? Not a jot. They wove through the pedestrians like the pedestrians, who were on the pedestrian crossing, were oddly shaped obstacles in a fun obstacle course. Weaved around them, the little cyclist, and nobody died, nobody got knocked into. Clearly very good at weaving through pedestrians and off he went. I agree that the cycle lanes should be for anything that's motorised. Footpaths, it's in the name, foot. For people with feet to walk on. Not for scooters, not for bikes. I am all for different forms of transport being incorporated into everyday life. It makes no sense. I mean, you see it all the time in the cities where ...
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    7 分
  • Kerre Woodham: Are you feeling optimistic?

    Kerre Woodham: Are you feeling optimistic?
    2025/11/26

    The Pohutukawa are out and flowering and abundant. The days are longer, the sun is shining, the Reserve Bank has cut the OCR, Christmas is coming, summer holidays are on the horizon, Chris Hipkins was talking tough around any kind of coalition with the Greens. We're in charge, we're not going to have this rabidly socialist nonsense, was the clear implication.

    Commentators are saying that this point now, here, is rock bottom. I know we've been told things are nearing the bottom, nearing the nadir, but this is it. And now things are on the up.

    So how confident are you feeling? I know when we've talked about this in the past, you've been bruised by past events, and that's informed the way you're thinking and who could blame you. The world has been a very uncertain place over the past five years, and nobody could blame you for hunkering down and keeping your nuts hoarded away. Nobody. Some of you have said, those of you that have got the readies to invest, you've said, "I'm not willing to. I'm just not willing to. I'm not willing to grow my business. I'm not willing to take risk in case Labour gets back in."

    Well, where are you at right now? The Reserve Bank lowered the OCR to 2.25%, the ninth reduction since August 2024. The bank said economic activity is picking up, inflation is forecast to fall to 2% by mid 2026, and that will help households.

    And listen to Roger Gray from the Ports of Auckland, who was on with Heather Du Plessis-Allan last night.

    “Nine months ago, I was in Miami talking to the cruise lines to try and understand why they were dropping off their bookings and the feedback across the whole lot of the four cruise lines I went to was they felt that New Zealand was just simply too hard to deal with because people were so negative about things. What I think is interesting is that's where we were and that was their perception, but the cool thing is now, I think there's a real change going on amongst people. There's a real starting to be a positivity amongst a lot of people and you know, I think the Bledisloe Wharf is a great example. If you can just get on and do stuff, we've created 250 new jobs for Aucklanders and that wharf will be finished by the end of next year.”

    He was saying, "Yeah, we used to be known as “No Zealand” and it was all like, 'Oh no, no. No, don't bother investing here. It's all too hard. No, you'll lose your money.'" He says it's quite different now. Quite different. He's picking up the positivity, he's seeing more of it. Where are you at right now?

    You know, as we go into Christmas, there's a month of business for many companies and many businesses and many workers. It's a busy time of year up until a couple of weeks before Christmas, then as we go into Christmas and the Christmas holidays, how are you feeling about going into 2026? Are you feeling optimistic? Can you feel the tide is turning?

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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    4 分
  • Kerre Woodham: Regional councils need to be streamlined

    Kerre Woodham: Regional councils need to be streamlined
    2025/11/25

    Regional councils are being abolished – or are they?

    Thomas Coughan writing in the Herald makes a very good point, it's not the councils that are being abolished, it's the council laws.

    Under the Government's proposal, which was announced yesterday, regional councils would have their governance replaced by Combined Territories Boards, a group made up of a region's mayors, which would govern regional councils instead. The Government wants these new CTBs to decide the future of local government in their regions over a period of two years. They'll look at whether to share services across councils, form shared council-owned companies, whether there's a case to amalgamate into larger unitary authorities, as Auckland has. The government will have the final say after that two years. If they don't like what the mayors come up with, the Local Government Minister will provide a top-down blueprint for how the board will look and what its purview will be.

    Right now, there are 11 regional councils in this country, alongside 12 city councils, 54 district councils, and six unitary authorities. The unitary authorities act like a local council and regional council combined. If you have a regional council in your area, it's responsible for the land, water, and air resources, flood control, environmental monitoring, and public transport, things like that. And councillors are voted in by you and me to make decisions on behalf of ratepayers. Not that we care. Nobody seems to care particularly if you look at the voter turnout as Minister for RMA Reform Chris Bishop told Mike Hosking this morning.

    “Well, I think no one cares partly because they can't understand it, right? So you vote for your regional councillor, then they elect a chair. I mean, how many people out there listening could actually name the regional council chairs who don't live in Auckland? I don't think anyone, not that many people be able to name a regional councillor. And then of course you've got all the confusion, right?

    “So in Wellington where I'm from, for example, the regional council runs the buses, but the Wellington City Council basically works out where you can actually put a bus stop, for example, and they do all the road closures and things like that. So there's enormous levels of complexity and complication that people just don't understand. And people say, well, hang on a minute, why am I voting for all these people? I don't understand who most of them are. I don't know who they are. And so there's enormous duplication in the system. So I think that partly explains why voter turnout rates are so low.”

    He makes a good point. Chris Bishop argues that the changes will reduce the cost of doing business and lower the amount we pay in rates, or at least keep a downward pressure on rates, by removing layers of duplication and bureaucracy. And you would have to say, surely, rates would come down if you're not paying the salaries of hundreds of people per region, their vehicles, the fuel required to power the vehicles, the office space they rent. There's 300-odd in Otago, more than 500 full-time staff in the Bay of Plenty, in the regional council alone. What do these people actually do? And I'd really love to know, how is it that you make life better for the people in your region?

    As Otago Regional Council chair Hilary Calvert told Ryan Bridge this morning, staff at the Otago Regional Council have doubled in six years. Has life improved for Otago residents by 100% in the last six years? I would very, very much doubt it.

    You could look at regional councils as like a modern version of the Ministry of Works - a make-work scheme for people in regions. Is that a good enough reason to keep them? Obviously, you're going to have people retained by the Combined Territories Boards. You're not going to see the wholesale sacking of hundreds of people across the region, but it will be streamlined. I mean, it has to be. You cannot tell me that having 500 full-time staff in Bay of Plenty for the regional council can be justified and nor can the number of councillors.

    People don't care. They don't understand it. It's a whole other level of bureaucracy. It needs to be streamlined.

    Maybe you think that the increase in your rates, making a make-work scheme for councillors and staff in a regional council is a worthwhile proposition. It's a money-go-round. You pay to have an inflated regional council. And the money comes back to you if you're a retailer because they will spend.

    To me, it just seems completely and utterly redundant and unproductive, and the sooner it's streamlined into a territorial board, into a streamlined service, the better.

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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    6 分
  • Kerre Woodham: We need to be able to treat feral animals as pests

    Kerre Woodham: We need to be able to treat feral animals as pests
    2025/11/24
    Cats and dogs who are part of our families are much loved and live the life of Riley. There must be some days when your cat or dog is lying curled up in the sun with a full tummy, waiting for 3 o'clock when the kids come home and surround it with love, or waiting for you to take it for a walk, or waiting for you to sit down so it can curl up in your lap and they must think to themselves, by crikey, I struck the jackpot. I am one lucky little fur baby. But cats and dogs that have been abandoned and live miserable lives eking out an existence in the bush and on the edges of the city are dangerous pests and they're in the sights of DOC. The New Zealand Veterinary Association and its Companion Animal Veterinarian Branch are the latest organisations to come out in support of feral cats' inclusion in the Predator Free 2050 Strategy. And there have been calls for wild dogs to be officially labelled pests too, so there can be more freedom to eradicate them. With the dogs, it comes after so many attacks in the Far North, the latest, an international ultra runner and his support crew were attacked by dogs on the Te Araroa Trail in January of this year and I believe there's still a wild dog warning along the Te Paki Coastal Track near Cape Reinga. There are limited options to tackle an animal problem if it is not labelled a pest. The dogs, for instance, you can only do what DOC is doing, and that's the authorised hunts but farmers are allowed to kill dogs on their own property if they're threatening them or their animals. And there have been numerous instances of herds and flocks being savaged by these feral dogs who are starving and desperate and also don't mind a little light sport of murdering and ravaging. So farmers are able to attack those dogs. You can also humanely trap them legally. But once you put an animal into the Predator Free 2050 charter, it will align national efforts, improve clarity, and support reasonable feral animal management practices, such as desexing, microchipping and containment. The vets say feral cats, while sentient, pose a serious threat to native wildlife and are implicated in the spread of diseases such as toxoplasmosis. So cats are in, but at this stage, dogs are still out. The vets say it's critical that humane destruction methods are employed for all pests included in the strategy, and I'd support that. You don't want any animal to suffer needlessly, but a country that prides itself on its native flora and fauna, sells itself to visitors on its flora and fauna, needs to be able to control the pests that threaten that. It's the human pests who neglect their pets, who dump unwanted litters of kittens and pups who are at fault here. A Far North dog advocate says as the economy worsens and people get poorer, the situation is getting worse because people don't have the money to fence their properties, they don't have the money to feed their dogs properly, they're exhausted, so they don't walk the dogs wander. The current laws, advocates for change say, do not serve communities well and lead to inconsistencies in the way councils around the country approach the roaming dog problem. The advocate says mandatory desexing, except for dogs belonging to registered breeders, would help but the absolute key to changing behaviour is community education about how to care for dogs and be safe around them. The Far North Mayor Moko Tepania supports a push by Auckland Council for greater powers to be able to desex roaming dogs when they're picked up. So your dog might have been a fully kitted out male when you let it go wandering off your property, but it'll come back to you neutered. Same with the females. And I don't have a problem with that either. Trapping, desexing and freeing feral cats was the strategy of choice of the wealthy cat ladies who were my neighbours when I was living next to a big park in Freeman's Bay in Auckland. These beautifully dressed women would take it in turns, there was a roster, to go around Western Park, trapping the cats, taking them to the vets, paying for them to be desexed, and then they'd set them free again. 'Oh yes, they'll kill a few birds and, but, you know, ultimately it will be a problem solved in the future'. They couldn't bear to see the cats put down, even humanely, but they could live with desexing them knowing that there wouldn't be future cats who would be living on the edges of the city. I just don't think it's a viable option, given how many feral cats there are in New Zealand. Nobody knows how many. The range from 2.5 million to 14 million is so wide, it makes it meaningless, but we do need to be able to treat feral animals as pests. Cats and dogs who belong to a family get all the protection in the world. You desex them, you microchip them, you love them. Cats and dogs that are neglected, unloved, and have turned feral, they should be fair game. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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    6 分
  • Chris Hipkins: Labour Leader talks capital gains taxes, coalitions, cross-party commitments

    Chris Hipkins: Labour Leader talks capital gains taxes, coalitions, cross-party commitments
    2025/11/24

    Chris Hipkins says coalitions require a balance of compromise and standing by values.

    The Labour leader says New Zealanders understand the nuances of MMP and the reality that parties can't get everything they want.

    He says that means parties often can't accomplish as much as they hoped.

    But Hipkins told Kerre Woodham some things will be bottom lines.

    Hipkins says an example of that is his commitment not to have a wealth tax, which he intends to hold to.

    Hipkins isn't laying out his plan for interest deductibility but says he hears landlords' argument for it.

    National brought back the scheme after Labour removed it in 2021, but its fate is still unclear if Labour makes a comeback in 2026.

    Hipkins told Woodham the decision will come out next year in Labour's alternative budget.

    He says he's heard from landlords who couldn't continue renting out properties after Labour's change in 2021.

    WATCH ABOVE

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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    34 分
  • Kerre Woodham: Do the Kiwisaver tweaks go far enough?

    Kerre Woodham: Do the Kiwisaver tweaks go far enough?
    2025/11/23
    Christopher Luxon has made his party's first election promise at a Christmas gathering for the party faithful of the Lower North Island. He said that they would lift the default KiwiSaver contribution rate, and eventually the changes would mean employees would see 12% of their earnings going into KiwiSaver, 6% from them, 6% from employers - a level that would match Australia's superannuation contribution rate, although of course in Australia, the whole contribution comes from the employer because they can afford it. The figure would come from hiking the default contribution rate from 3%, where it is today, to four, then 6% by 2032. The employer contribution would also rise to 6%, achieving that combined rate of 12% by 2032. Christopher Luxon said under the changes, a 21-year-old who's earning $65,000 a year today would retire with a KiwiSaver balance of about 1.4 million, bare minimum. No one, it appears, thinks that this is a bad idea. The only concern is that the tinkering with KiwiSaver doesn't go far enough. Commentators say KiwiSaver needs to be compulsory, otherwise people would just opt out, thinking they can't afford the contributions. They do not realise when they're 21 that they can't afford not to contribute to KiwiSaver, because 65 comes far faster than you can ever possibly imagine. Others, like Milford Asset Management Kiwi Saver head Murray Harris, says National needs to look at improving other moving parts. Fundamentally, this is a good announcement, but there's a lot of moving parts with KiwiSaver. And I think what we need to see is what's the long-term strategic plan for KiwiSaver and what are the settings that are going to be set for the long-term future? Because at the moment you do have the so-called total compensation where your employer can pay you out of your pay, the employer contribution. Now that should be scrapped. That's another one of the settings that National haven't announced or included in this announcement. And there's there are others as well that we need New Zealanders to be really confident that KiwiSaver is going to be set for the future, there isn't going to be tinkering with it every time we get a change in political party, and that they can be confident that their long-term savings and retirement savings for the future are going to be as they expect. Yes. Chris Hipkins says it's a good thing to increase retirement savings. The transition is the key. The policy may encourage employers to Uberise their workforces by turning erstwhile employees into contractors. I would love to hear from those of you who have just started in the workforce perhaps, who have been in the workforce for about two or three years. Where does your pay packet go? In terms of what you're paying back. You might have a student loan. When it comes to KiwiSaver, how much can you afford to put in? Do you accept, as somebody who has just entered the workforce, that you're going to need to save for your retirement? I I'm pretty sure that message has got through to the next generation that there's going to be a real necessity for feathering your own nest. You might think when you first start off with your paying back of your student loan and the like, saving for a house, that KiwiSaver's just there to get that deposit on a home. Or you might want a couple of years of lavish spending because you've been living as a student, living on the low-cost pittas from the takeaway shop and the two-minute noodles. You want to know what it feels like to have money to splash around so you'll pay back your student loan and then you'll think about KiwiSaver. How many of you are squirrelling away your nuts, so to speak, because you understand that the sooner you start saving with compound interest, the better off you're going to be. When it comes to those who have recently retired, I'd really like to hear from you too. So you might have stopped work a couple of years ago. Do you have enough invested and saved to get by? Did it come as a bit of a shock? Or was it pretty much as you expected that with the investments you had, the savings you had, the house that you'd paid off, that combined with the super, you're just fine. There are a lot of people, I think, who don't realise that when it comes to being poor, it's pretty rubbish - but being poor and old is doubly rubbish. And unless you start saving at a very young age, even a little bit, like look at the Rich Dad Poor Dad, even putting 10 bucks a week away, getting into that habit of saving is the best thing you can possibly do for yourself. I wish I'd had it hammered home to me when I first started work. There are good savers, like being good at languages. People are who are good at budgeting, and then there are hopeless ones. But even hopeless ones need to know that even a little bit set aside every payday is going to pay off in the long run. I think that message has got through, but I'd love to hear from those of you who have just started work and those of you ...
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    7 分
  • Bosses Unfiltered Episode 7: Angus Brown

    Bosses Unfiltered Episode 7: Angus Brown
    2025/11/21

    It’s hard enough to chase a scientific breakthrough.

    But as New Zealand company Ārepa found out it's even harder and more expenisve to defend your breakthroughs time and time again.

    Ārepa was founded in 2017 and the so called “brain drink” company was growing at a rapid pace when at the end of 2023, they hit a massive speed bump.

    That's when the Ministry for Primary Industries and an Auckland University scientist came out and said the company hadn’tactually proven better brain function at all.

    Ārepa found itself in the headlines, but for all the wrong reasons.

    The company's co-founder and co-chief executive Angus Brown told their story with Kerre Woodham on the latest episode of Bosses Unfiltered.

    LISTEN ABOVE

    NOTE: This interview was recorded on June 4th 2025.

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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    34 分
  • Matt Brown: She Is Not Your Rehab co-founder on violence against women continuing to be so prevalent

    Matt Brown: She Is Not Your Rehab co-founder on violence against women continuing to be so prevalent
    2025/11/20

    Violence against women remains one of the world’s most persistent and under-addressed human rights crises.

    A report from the World Health Organisation says that 1 in 3 women, an estimated 840 million globally, have experienced partner or sexual violence during their lifetime, a figure that has barely changed since 2000.

    In Australia and New Zealand, 24.5 percent of women have been sexually or physically abused by a partner.

    She Is Not Your Rehab co-founder Matt Brown told Kerre Woodham that society has done a great job in normalising anger as the best outlet for men, which looks like rage and violence towards the people they say they love the most.

    He says there need to be more systems in place to educate men in emotional regulation, making things like grief or sadness a normal part of conversation.

    LISTEN ABOVE

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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    11 分