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.

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

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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.

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A new report from the World Health Organization has found (old news really), a quarter of women have been physically or sexually abused by a partner. It's 24.5% for Australia and New Zealand, so about the same. And there are calls for a public awareness and education campaign in this country about domestic violence. Really? Who needs to be taught that assaulting someone, hurting someone is wrong? You know it's wrong. Children know it's wrong.

There have been public campaigns for as long as I can remember, warning people that domestic violence lasts, endures, infects through generations. That if a child is raised in a violent family, then chances are that's what they see as normal, a way of responding to stress. There have been education campaigns warning you need to walk away when you feel your temper rising, that you need to walk away when you feel threatened. But apparently, according to the experts, this sort of education campaign is precisely what we do need. In the mid 2000s, and you might remember it, the It's Not Okay campaign was on our televisions. Importantly, it was backed up with 150 community-based prevention projects, and that what was made the impact, and then it was dropped and the experts say this is what we need to bring back. Our stats are dreadful. I mean, you can scoff at the World Health Organization and you can say, "Oh, well, we measure crime differently," but I don't think you can argue that our stats are absolutely appalling. And I say this against the backdrop of the deaths of those three beautiful children in Sanson, which has to be one of the more heartbreaking stories we've ever reported in this country.

We have the highest rate of family violence in the OECD. They're across all socio-economic groups. Each year New Zealand police conducts more than 100,000 investigations related to family violence. Nearly half of all homicides and reported violent crimes are family violence related. One in four females, one in eight males, experience sexual violence or abuse in their lifetimes, and many of them before the age of 16.

The head of Women's Refuge, Ang Jury, says until such time as men realise they don't own their women, nothing is going to change, but who would put up their hand and say that's genuinely what they think? That they have a woman, they love her, they have children together, and if she argues or if she wants to do something that you don't want to do, or if she wants to leave you, that you then have the right to meet out violence upon her, to prevent her from going, or to take her life so nobody else can have her. Nobody would put up their hand and say, "This is what I genuinely think." Surely to goodness. So what happens?

I received a text a couple of weeks ago when we were talking about the impact of drugs on mental health. And this text said that relationship breakups had more of a detrimental impact on his mental health, and that of his mates, than any drug he'd consumed. That the relationship breakup stuffed with his head far more than the drugs. So do you not know you have a problem until you have it? You might think that you've got a really well-ordered life, that you've got yourself together, that you're a perfectly, perfectly normal human being. You can cope with life's slings and arrows, and then your partner leaves you, and what? You are catapulted to a place and into a being that you simply do not recognize? That you lose all reason?

Helen and I were talking about this before we came on air. We just do not know men who react with violence. Not our friends, not our family members, not our work colleagues. Well, you know, the ones we're close to, our friends. I find it utterly inconceivable that in this day and age you can think that if a woman, or a man, decides to leave the relationship that you can therefore mete out violence - that it's justified. And I would guarantee nobody listening would think that was a legitimate and reasonable course of action. So what happens?

After tragedies, people say, "Well, we didn't see it." Either they say it's been happening for a long time and it was inevitable, or we knew it was going to happen and one day she was going to end up dead, so there's been a pattern of abusive behaviour, or it comes completely and utterly out of the blue. There is no halfway house.

How can people still think this? Like Ang Jury says, until such time as men realize they don't own their women, nothing is going to change. What man genuinely can put up their hand and say that is what I think? So clearly something must happen.

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Rail Minister Winston Peters yesterday confirmed we are to get two new rail-enabled Cook Strait ferries.

The Government's signed a fixed-price contract with a Chinese shipbuilder and is securing teams to build port infrastructure in Picton and Wellington.

Rail Minister Winston Peters claims the total cost will come in under $2 billion and delivered on time in 2029.

Ferry Holdings' Chris McKenzie told Kerre Woodham that while it’s not the Sydney Opera House and the Taj Mahal, the port infrastructure they’re creating is more than fit for purpose.

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A little bit husky, a little bit hoarse, not as bad as Heather, but a little bit husky from belting out the classics at Eden Park last night with Metallica. Oh my god. Oh my god. What a show. What an event for the city. If you were there, you know, and you'll still be buzzing, and you will still think that is one of the best concerts you've ever been to.

I used to quite like Metallica. I mean, you can't grow up in the 80s and not know who they are and not appreciate them as a consummate as consummate performance, but I wasn't a die-hard fan. I went down after work yesterday to get some merch because I was taking my eight-year-old grandson to the show last night because he loves them. I thought I like them, I'll go, I'll get him a T-shirt. A three-hour queue to get the merch! And the town was heaving with people in Metallica T-shirts, and I thought, wow who on earth would queue for three hours? Who would travel from the far ends of the country and from across the Tasman to go to Metallica? After that show last night, I'll tell you who will be queuing for three hours, me, I will be.

I've gone from they're good to oh my god. And I've got all of these years of music to catch up on. How fabulous. And just for the vibrancy it brought to the city. And I have to say Eden Park, and a number of us at ZB were invited along by Eden Park, so bear that in mind when I say what I say, but Eden Park is a fantastic venue. Everybody it seemed had great seats. The show itself, the stage was amazing. There were no problems for us getting out. We walked for 15 minutes, got picked up by his dad and out we went. The crowd was lovely. Honestly, I could rave all morning, but I'm not going to. I shan't. It was amazing and perhaps we can compare notes a little later.

We do have news to talk about. And finally, finally, finally after years of wrangling, and after years of cost blowouts, and after years of political infighting, ladies and gentlemen, we have two new ferries. Well, not exactly – we have a contract for two new ferries.

And yes, wait, yes, we did have a contract for two new ferries with the South Korean shipyard. That contract got torn up. Now we have a new contract for two new ferries with a Chinese shipbuilder. Port infrastructure will have to be rebuilt to accommodate the larger ferries while much of the Wellington side infrastructure can be rebuilt and upgraded. Picton they'll need new stuff, Wellington they can make do.

And that's where the real savings are to be had for the taxpayer. The new ferries will be hybrids, able to switch between using diesel and electric power, and will have more capacity for trucks and rail wagons that exist at present. Winston Peters, who's been all over this from day one, said the new no-nonsense infrastructure programme was helping save the taxpayer money when the two ships enter service in 2029.

The iRex project, that was the one ditched by the Coalition Government when it came to office, which included substantial costs for landside infrastructure, had ballooned to approximately $3 billion at the time of its cancellation. In 2023, Treasury officials said, yes, we know it looks like $3 billion, we think it could be more like $4 billion when we look at the cost overruns, when we benchmark it against average cost overruns and other similar projects. When even Grant Robertson, the former Finance Minister, says, oh no, we're spending way too much money, this is very concerning. When he says that, you know that it's getting out of control.

There was no guarantee it was going to be around $4 billion. And the problem seems to have been, rather than delivering the much oft-quoted phrase of Nicola Willis', a Toyota Corolla, under the spell of the former government, there were consultants and officials going, oh my god, we can build a state-of-the-art shipping infrastructure within New Zealand, and it's going to have all the bells and whistles and the very latest technology, and yes, we do have to build completely new infrastructure to service it, but my god, can we look what we can do. And they were given full rein to go off and design something and create something really beautiful that just kept getting more and more expensive.

The new ferries are expected to replace the current fleet by the end of 2029, and possibly there will be cost overruns, and possibly it won't be 2029. I spoke to the chair of Ferry Holdings, Chris Mackenzie before we came on air, wait till you hear the attitude he takes, the pragmatic, no-nonsense, no-frills, let's just get the job done approach. That's what was needed and that's what we've got.

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It's the 15th anniversary today of the Pike River mine disaster, and on this anniversary, unions are calling for a corporate manslaughter law to be enshrined in legislation, as it is in other countries like the UK, Australia, Canada.

29 men were killed when an explosion ripped through the Pike River mine on the West Coast of the South Island. And despite reforms following Pike River, including the creation of WorkSafe in 2013 and the Health and Safety at Work Act in 2015, New Zealand continues to record twice as many workplace deaths as Australia, four times as many as the UK per capita. Workplace injuries and illnesses cost the country an estimated $5 billion each year.

A new Public Health Communication Centre briefing by leading health and safety experts finds that weak enforcement, inadequate fines, and a poor understanding of legal duties by employers and political leaders are key reasons for the lack of progress. And it warns that proposed changes to shift the regulator's focus from enforcement to advice, alongside ACC's move to deprioritise injury prevention, risks further undermining worker protection.

And yet, when you look at the health and safety legislation and the red tape and the orange road cones, not a single road cone seems to have helped in preventing workers' lives being lost. We're 25th in the OECD. Australia is a dangerous place to work. And yet somehow, we manage to record twice as many workplace deaths as they do. What is it? Are workers in high-risk jobs depending on the rules to keep themselves safe? To keep their mates safe? Rather than using their own nous and judgement they think, well, the rules are there, I don't have to think about it. I don't have to think about what I'm doing.

Are too many workers turning up impaired by alcohol or drugs, and that impairs their judgement? They don't see things, or they cut corners, or they're tired, fatigued. Are bosses cutting corners and risking people's lives? Or are the bosses putting in health and safety protocols that workers are simply ignoring?

What is it about this country that means we are so bad at either looking after ourselves and our mates, or finding ways to protect our workers?

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Today marks the 15th anniversary of the Pike River mine disaster that killed 29 men.

Despite reforms following the incident, New Zealand's workplace health and safety record remains poor, with fatality and injury rates among the highest in the developed world.

Workplace injuries and illnesses cost the country an estimated $5 billion each year.

Victoria University workplace health and safety lecturer Dr Chris Peace told Kerre Woodham that putting ACC in place has taken away a lot of stress and angst, but a strong regulatory system needed to be put in place and wasn’t.

He says that the legislation imposes a duty of care on businesses, but the problem is that most people don’t understand what that amounts to.

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