/on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/rss ¾ÅÒ»ÐÇ¿ÕÎÞÏÞ Sat, 23 Aug 2025 12:02:37 Z en /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-peeni-is-harming-labours-chances-at-government/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-peeni-is-harming-labours-chances-at-government/ Seems to me that Peeni Henare's shenanigans in the by-election right now is exactly the kind of thing that Labour has to knock on the head, quick smart, if they want to be in the game at the election next year. Now, as we were discussing earlier, even though Carmel Sepuloni has told Peeni off for saying that he wants to repeal the gang patch ban, he is not backing down. Right? He said it on Wednesday, they told him off on Thursday, and today he's not backing down. He's repeated it because he says it's his personal view. If not the Labour party’s, and he has whānau experience. Now, why he's actually doing this, in my opinion, is because the Māori Party's doing it. That's the real reason, because if you have a look at what actually happened on Wednesday night in that by-election candidates meeting, it was the Māori Party candidate Orini Kaipara who first answered the question.The question was, will you repeal the ban? She said, yes, and after she said yes, Peeni Henare then said yes too. Now, maybe he does truly believe that it is the right thing to do. But as I told you, it makes no sense as a political calculation. Why would you chase the vote of 10,000 gang members if doing that means that you lose the votes of, I don't know, maybe 100,000 normal Kiwis who think the ban is a good idea. The only answer to that question is because you actually don't care about the 100,000 votes. You're not trying to help the Labour Party win, you're just trying to win your electorate seat. In one of the Māori electorates, and you will say whatever it takes to match the Māori Party. Now, Labour needs to sort this stuff out before the next election. If Peeni or other candidates or Willie Jackson or even the entire Labour Party keeps chasing the Māori Party down the nutty radical road, they will, they will lose middle New Zealand. Just like they did when Jacinda was being told what to do by Willie and Nanaia. If I was giving them advice, it would be to leave the nutty stuff to the Māori Party and go to the center themselves again. Maybe it means MPs like Peeni Henare will lose their seats, but that may be the sacrifice you have to make in order to win the election. Fri, 22 Aug 2025 07:17:44 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-richard-chambers-just-reminded-us-of-how-good-we-have-it-here/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-richard-chambers-just-reminded-us-of-how-good-we-have-it-here/ I'm gonna say thank you to the Police Commissioner, Richard Chambers, for maybe reminding us to be grateful for what we have. He gave an interview to the Herald today and he said he thinks there is a fair bit of punching down on New Zealand going on at the moment. And he thinks that's unfair. He says: "With the world going a little crazy, I count us lucky that we are where we are." Now, given how much doom and gloom there is at the moment, it may surprise you to know that the accompanying poll in the Herald article actually agrees with him - as unscientific as it is. Most people rate their experience of living in New Zealand as 8 out of 10. 20 percent of people say they have an 8 out of 10 experience. Then the next one up is 10 out of 10. That's 15 percent. 7 out of 10 comes next, and 13 percent of us say that.  So, 7, 8, 9, and 10 out of 10 account for 58 percent of the votes. Way more than half of us think that we are living in a pretty great place. Now, as I say, it's not scientific, but it is a nice reminder that actually most of us do know how good we've got it. It's really easy to fall into the trap of thinking the grass is greener on the other side, which is why so many of us are leaving and heading off to places like Australia. Actually, if the other side is Australia, once they get there, they are going to realize it's not that much greener.  They're gonna go through the same stuff with the economy that they were going through back here in New Zealand.Life over there is expensive as well. And if the other side is Europe, it's definitely not greener over there. It's actually tens of thousands of refugees arriving on your doorstep. It's huge unrest over migrants in the UK. It's the threat of war just across the border. And it's cost of living problems there too. Now, I'm not Pollyannaish at all about New Zealand. I know life is expensive, I know there are people who have never had to budget who are now having to budget. I can see that the Government books definitely need tidying up, and we're completely overdue structural economic change. But at least most things are headed in the right direction. Education for our kids has been sorted out, red tape is being cut, the economy is turning around, the days are getting longer, and we live in a safe place with a good work-life balance where our kids can grow up fairly healthy. So thank you to the Police Commissioner, of all people, for reminding us of that. Thu, 21 Aug 2025 07:21:19 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-was-kiwibanks-jarrod-kerr-proven-right/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-was-kiwibanks-jarrod-kerr-proven-right/ The longer that this economic funk that we find ourselves in goes on, the more that Jarrod Kerr of Kiwibank is being proven right, isn't he? And we had a cut today - it was 25 basis points down to 3 percent - and now there's the expectation that we will maybe get down to 2.5 percent before this thing bottoms out. 2.5 percent is where Jarrod Kerr has been saying for months that we need to get to. But even though he's been saying it since at least September last year, if not earlier, the Reserve Bank has only just caught up with him. Up til now, they've been talking about 2.75 percent, 3 percent maybe. Now, what you should take from this is that the Reserve Bank is surprised by what Jarrod Kerr - and you could argue many of us - have been seeing for ages, which is that the economy is properly, properly stuffed. Like, stuffed enough that they should be cutting a lot more than they are. Why this is a surprise to them is beyond me, because you just need to look at what's going on with businesses today to see it. Fletcher: a massive loss. Spark: profit down massively, huge job cuts there. Kitchen Things: in receivership. Now, some of that will be absolutely because of poor decisions, but some of that is because we are in an economic funk - recession - as bad as anything in my entire life. I mean, the last time we saw anything this bad was the 80s, but some indicators say the 70s. So why the Reserve Bank hasn't cut more, including today, is baffling. They debated it, by the way - it did occur to them. Four of them voted for the 25 basis point cut that we got, two of them voted for a double cut of 50 basis points. That mean two of them can see what the rest of us can see, but the four win, unfortunately. The fact that they cut today and indicated they will cut more than they had previously expected to cut is a sign that they made a mistake when they didn't cut last time and opted to hold instead. The Reserve Bank is once again caught on the hop, making the economy worse than it needs to be. If only Jarrod Kerr was running the joint. LISTEN ABOVE Wed, 20 Aug 2025 07:35:59 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-its-good-that-trevor-mallards-coming-home/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-its-good-that-trevor-mallards-coming-home/ So here's a little bit of happy news for anyone still feeling injustice over the petty way that Trevor Mallard turned the sprinklers on the Parliamentary protesters and made everything worse - he is coming home from his plum job in Ireland as the ambassador. As Winston Peters says, quoting The Seekers - the carnival's over. And it's a good job too, because it was always deeply unfair that Mallard could behave like a child and basically torment fellow Kiwis, and then be rewarded by his mates with a job that was funded by Kiwis. Now Winston's trying to spin this like he's bringing Trevor Mallard home early. He's actually not really at all. Trevor's due home in January. It's understood that he's gonna be back in November. Whoop dee doo- two months early in a three-year term is hardly a punishment or a massive recall, isn't it? I mean, if Winston wanted to bring him home early, he could have brought him home at any point in the last two years that he's been the Foreign Minister. But I will agree with Winston on something here, which is that I think we have got to stop appointing politicians to diplomatic jobs. He says full stop - I say as a reward. I still think that there will be some politicians who are exceptional and who deserve these jobs because they would do an excellent job representing us. And I've always thought it was a pity that Helen Clark never got a posting overseas. But often, they're just lousy at it, aren't they? I mean, Phil Goff stuffed up. He had to come back. Jonathan Hunt embarrassed us by wanting to claim the pension in the UK when he was already on a very good wicket from us. Kevin Rudd - the Australian version of all of this - got sent to Washington by the Aussies and then embarrassed them by posting weird stuff about Trump before Trump became President again, then having to go back through his social medias and delete it all. Being a politician doesn't necessarily make these people good diplomats, and Trevor Mallard is absolutely an example of that. He has never been accused of being diplomatic. In my opinion, the only reason that he ever got this gig in Ireland is because his daughter lives in Ireland, and because he was some sort of an avuncular figure to Grant and Jacinda and Chippy, who were in Government when he was appointed. That is not a good reason to send someone to an Ambassador's job. It's not a good reason to get a job that you and I are paying for. So as Winston says, carnival's over - good thing too. LISTEN ABOVE Tue, 19 Aug 2025 07:18:39 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-why-arent-these-leaders-willing-to-properly-help-zelenskyy/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-why-arent-these-leaders-willing-to-properly-help-zelenskyy/ So if anything, tonight's meeting at the White House is actually more important than Saturday's meeting was in Alaska - because this is the meeting with Zelenskyy. This is the meeting where the guy who has been invaded has to spell out how much land he is prepared to give up to Putin. And that is a lot harder than what happened in Alaska, which was just Putin laying down his dream scenario. And you can see that the European leaders realize that this is more important, because they're coming with Zelenskyy. You've got Keir Starmer of the UK, Emmanuel Macron of France, Friedrich Merz of Germany and a whole bunch of others - and they're going to be Zelenskyy's hype squad at the White House to try to stop Trump bullying him, which is actually fair enough after what happened last time. But I have to be honest, I find Europe endlessly frustrating over Ukraine. I mean, here they are dropping everything to rush over to Washington with Zelenskyy, to presumably stop Trump from taking too much of Ukraine's land away from them. But where was this haste in dropping everything and helping Ukraine to stop Putin taking Ukraine's land away from them? These European guys have absolutely supplied weapons, but the spend, when you look at it, has actually been tiny. I mean, they make such a song and dance about the fact that Ukraine has to hold the line otherwise Putin will come for them next. But then they hardly actually help Ukraine to hold the line. For a war that threatens them, Germany has put in less than 0.2 percent of GDP. The UK, much the same. France, less than 0.1 percent of GDP. And a few weeks ago, you'll remember they had the idea of putting European boots on the ground in Ukraine. They formed the Coalition of the Willing and it was all go - and then it never happened. No boots ever arrived. Now, those boots might actually have been helpful to Ukraine in being able to fight Putin off.  And so it is somewhat rich that these leaders who are not prepared to actually really help Zelenskyy hold the line against Putin now suddenly want to help him hold the line against Trump. I mean, they are probably right, Putin probably does want Ukraine and then more afterwards, and forcing Zelenskyy to give up land only delays the problem and doesn't solve it, because Putin will just come for more later on. But what other option does Zelenskyy have right now? Because he cannot keep fighting like this if Europe won't actually help him fight, other than just giving him a few nice words in a hype squad. LISTEN ABOVE Mon, 18 Aug 2025 07:17:32 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-duplessis-allan-hospital-food-is-excessively-policed/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-duplessis-allan-hospital-food-is-excessively-policed/ Well, I don't know what kind of psychosis has taken hold of the bureaucrats at Health New Zealand, but you want to see these rules that they've put out about the food and what food is allowed and what food is banned from the hospital cafeterias. It is ridiculously, ridiculously prescriptive. So what they've done is they, they, they put out, because they like wasting their time on nonsense, they've put out their new national food and drink policy. And it's divided food into three categories. You've got the green category, that's the good stuff. You've got the amber category, that's a bit naughty, but OK, and you've got the red category and that's banned. So what you are allowed to eat when you go to the hospital cafeteria is chicken.  But without the skin on. So that you're basically left with the saddest, driest chicken breast known to man. Yum, enjoy yourself. Beef and pork, that is allowed, but the staff have to trim the visible fat off, and they have to drain the fatty drippings, which completely ignores the modern research that shows actually meat fat is not that bad for you, and maybe you need it.  You are allowed to have a quiche, but it must have no crust. You are allowed a vegetable slice or an egg cup, but they must contain vegetables. A pie is OK, but only if it's smaller than 210 g, and only if it has a potato top. What I've just described to you is basically the green category.  That is the only food that they're allowed to display to us. Everything else must not be within your eyesight, cause God only knows what's gonna happen if you clap your eyes on a muffin. The green category must make up 55% of the food at the hospital cafeteria. Amber foods, things you're allowed to eat but not allowed to see, include things like muffins and loaves and slices. They must all be under 120 g, savory pies must be under 210 g, not on display. Nacho chips, white bread, Doughboys, wraps, and pizza bases. They are allowed to have icing on the sweeter things, but they're only allowed to have very little bit of icing, not a lot.  Red food, this is food that is recommended to be banned, includes marshmallows in your hot chocolate.  Thick icing, chocolate covered food, food containing confectionery, like rocky roads, lolly slices, pebbles, wontons.  Oh, that's not actually got lollies in it, but it also includes wontons, money bags, spring rolls, commercially flavored rice, pasta, noodles, and deep fried items. Now, I don't know what, what this tells you about Health New Zealand, but I'm gonna guess that they've either lost the plot or whoever made these rules has decided to run the cafeteria in the spirit of a communist dictatorship, where adults must have every aspect of their lives controlled for them.  The fact that we are adults and can decide for ourselves what we should or should not eat is clearly not been factored into this equation.  Some of us actually enjoy to have the fat on the meat, very much. Some of us like to eat the skin on our chicken. Hospitals, do I need to remind you are grim. Going to the cafeteria to buy a treat for yourself or perhaps your dying loved 1 may be the only thing that that person has in the day that brings them a little bit of joy.  Now, the thing is, Health New Zealand can go ahead with this if they want to.  It's their cafeteria after all. Problem with their little dictatorship plan is they only control their tiny little communist state. They do not control.  The gigantic capitalist market outside of it. So I don't know about you, but as a an adult who can decide for myself, I suspect I will be bringing in my brioche, dripping in gigantic slabs of icing and just eating it on their premises. LISTEN ABOVE Fri, 15 Aug 2025 06:39:37 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-jacinda-grant-chippy-and-ayesha-cant-prevent-accountability/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-jacinda-grant-chippy-and-ayesha-cant-prevent-accountability/ I think what many of us are experiencing right now, re: Jacinda, Grant, Chippy and Ayesha not fronting publicly for the COVID inquiry is not disappointment, because disappointment requires us to have had a higher expectation of them. And I don't think that we did, because I think we got the measure of these people a long time ago. I think what we're experiencing right now is a sense of injustice, because these people had the power, and they used that power to do things to our lives that no other politicians in the history of this country have done. They told us not to leave our homes, they shut the border so that we couldn't leave the country or come back in. They ended some businesses through their rules, they effectively forced people out of jobs for not taking a vaccine that I would say most of us don't even bother with now. Now, we can argue about whether any of that or all of that was justified, but I don't think we can argue about how massive that was. It was huge, unprecedented power. Now, with power comes responsibility and accountability - and that's where they're letting us down because they are refusing to be held accountable, even if just in answering questions in front of us, for us to be able to see it. Now, right or wrong, their actions during Covid caused so many people to lose faith in Government. This was their chance, I think, to restore that a little bit. Instead, what they're doing is they're causing us to lose even more faith in Government. If these people ever tell themselves or us that they are here to serve, it is utter BS. They're not here to serve. If they were, every single one of them would put their country's expectations of answers ahead of their own ambitions, but they're not. It's more important for Jacinda to keep managing her brand and living her best international life of glamour. More important for Grant Robertson to keep pulling in that $630,000 a year at Otago. More important for Chippy to try to have another go - deluded - at being Prime Minister again and more important for Ayesha to preserve whatever credibility she has left as a health academic. But they should know, they can delay accountability, but they cannot prevent accountability. And they will be held accountable. Maybe through a future Commission of Inquiry one day or maybe just through the history books that eventually trash their reputations like history has trashed so many other politicians, including Muldoon's. Either way, add to the long list of unpleasant things that we've learned about them, we can now add cowardice to that list too. LISTEN ABOVE Thu, 14 Aug 2025 07:43:38 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-why-has-parliament-become-such-a-circus/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-why-has-parliament-become-such-a-circus/ I can't blame you if your assessment of Parliament today is that it's become a circus, because what happened today is kind of hard to defend or even explain. Chlöe was kicked out, Brownlee suspended her for a week and all of the Government parties voted for that punishment - and that includes New Zealand First, before Winston Peters then got up to tell Jerry Brownlee that the punishment wasn't fair, even though he just voted for the punishment. And then Debbie got up and said the C-word again. Now, Chlöe did actually break the rules. I mean, this is another one of those seemingly arbitrary or hard to explain rules in Parliament - that MPs can't accuse each other of being cowards. Nick Smith did it in 2003, he accused MPs across the house of not having the spine to debate a vote. He withdrew and apologized. Steve Chadwick did it in 2007, she accused the opposition of being absolutely gutless and spineless. She withdrew and apologized. John Key did it in 2015, quite famously when he yelled at Labour to get some guts over the war, but he got away with it and actually probably shouldn't have. So Chlöe did break the rules. But then, Debbie got up and said the C-word, and she didn't break the rules. So explain that. How is accusing other MPs of being spineless worse than dropping the C-bomb in the House of Representatives? I mean, sure, one is aimed at someone and the other one is just a swear word that's been dropped. But when you get into explaining that level of nuance on offensiveness, I think you've lost the audience. Plus, why is Gerry Brownlee all of a sudden the tough cop?  I mean, this is the guy who was wringing his hands over the Māori Party getting kicked out of Parliament for 3 weeks for the haka in David Seymour's face and for refusing to turn up to the Privileges Committee and for them leaking the recommended punishment from the Privileges Committee. But when Chlöe says basically the same thing that John Key once said without punishment, Jerry comes down on her like a ton of bricks. Frankly, none of this makes sense anymore. I mean, it does on a level of detail and minutia, sure, but explaining it to a normal person, no sense whatsoever. But guess who's loving this? Chlöe's loving this, because Chlöe's learned from Te Pāti Māori and the haka that there's one surefire way to get attention, and that's to break the rules of Parliament and not be sorry. What a circus. LISTEN ABOVE Wed, 13 Aug 2025 07:46:29 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-luxon-isnt-nationals-biggest-problem/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-luxon-isnt-nationals-biggest-problem/ I'm happy to report to you that it looks like some of us want to play the old 'should Luxon be rolled' game. In the wake of the not-so-great polls that came out yesterday, there is a column by Andrea Vance - who I am name-checking because she's good and credible, and not just some junior reporter with an opinion. In her column, she predicts that Luxon is in trouble, that his caucus is getting impatient, that speculation about his leadership has reached fever pitch - and that if it doesn't improve, she is not sure that he's going to be the one leading the National Party at election time this time next year. Now, if this is really what National MPs are considering, they should ditch that idea immediately because Luxon's not their problem. I mean, he is a problem. There's no debate that with personal popularity sitting at about 20 percent, he is a drag on the National Party - but he is not their actual problem. Their actual problem is that the economy is stuffed and that they haven't yet figured out what to do to fix it, even though they've had 18 months.  And it really doesn't matter who the leader is, whether it's Nicola or Chris Bishop, or Erica, or Mark Mitchell or Golden Balls, it doesn't matter. They still will not have a plan for the economy. Now, if they're worried about their polling right now, they should try playing the game of musical leadership chairs and see what happens to their polling then, because they're still not going to have a plan for the economy - but then they'll also have voters feeling like it's a shambles up the top in the Beehive and not sure what's going on there. Yes, they have a problem and yes, you can see it in the polls. So fix it. Come up with a solution. Come up with a credible plan for fixing the economy now and into the future. That is where the Nats should be directing their energy, not into undermining Chris Luxon. LISTEN ABOVE Tue, 12 Aug 2025 07:11:09 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-should-national-be-worried-about-these-poll-numbers/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-should-national-be-worried-about-these-poll-numbers/ Let's talk about this political poll. National is behind Labour. National's on 32, Labour's on 34. Now, this is not the first time that National has fallen behind Labour since the last election. The first time it happened was November last year. Then it happened again in January, twice. Then it happened again in March, twice. Then it happened in May, then it happened twice in June, and then it happened twice just in the last month. Now, it is becoming more and more frequent that this is happening. And if you see it in its graph form, it's actually quite arresting, what's going on here. This is not an aberration, this is a trend of National consistently losing ground and Labour consistently making up ground. This has been happening since the election, but it really started to gather steam at the start of this year. Now, I do not think that Labour will win the next election because I think their bedfellows and the Greens and the Māori Party are just way too nutty. I don't think enough people will want to vote for Labour, but National should be worried because these polls show that enough voters don't want to vote for National either, because right now, they are profoundly disappointing, aren't they? I mean, answer me this question - what has this Government done to help the economy? Apart from the investment tax boost incentive in the budget in May, what have they actually done? I feel like the answer is nothing. Yes, this economy was shot when they took it over, it's not their fault, but their election promise was to get it back on track. But in order to get it back on track, you actually have to do something, and they've done nothing. They're spending more than Grant, they're running deficits from here until basically the end of their possible term, and they're making announcements of things they might want to do sometime in the future, but they're not doing it just yet. If there is a vibe in this country right now, especially in places like Auckland and Wellington, it's a vibe that I reckon kicked in about 5 or 6 weeks ago properly, just after the halfway mark of this Government's electoral term, when people realized - you know what? We're halfway through and they've done nothing, and this economy still sucks. And that, I think, is what you're seeing in this poll, just a lot of disappointment. LISTEN ABOVE Mon, 11 Aug 2025 07:28:26 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-how-hard-is-it-for-labour-to-check-their-texts/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-how-hard-is-it-for-labour-to-check-their-texts/ So I don't know what's worse, the fact that Willow Jean Prime is a lazy, disinterested waste of space in Labour's team, or the fact that Labour's been busted almost lying about this. So let me get you across what happened, and you can decide for yourself.  In March, Willow Jean Prime took over the Labour Party education portfolio from Jan Tonetti, and her National Party counterpart, Erika Stanford, sent her a text to say congrats and I need to get you up to speed with the NCEA change process. It would be good if we could meet first and I can run you through where we're at. There is a policy advisory group of principals who are working on the details. You can have access to them as well as my officials and also NZQA.  Willow Jean does not bother to reply.  Two months later in May, Erica's office sends an email saying, basically, haven't heard from Willow Jean, would like to ensure cross-party engagement can continue. Can we set up a meeting?  Willow Jean doesn't bother to reply.  A month later in mid-Junne, Erica personally writes again, Willow Jean, yeah, you know, doesn't bother to reply. Next month, July, Erica then goes up a level and writes to Chippy. He doesn't reply either, but then the next day Willow Jean finally does reply, and she says she declines your invitation.  Fast forward now to the 25th of July and suddenly Willow Jean writes to Erica wanting to meet because she's read in the Herald that the NCEA changes are coming soon. Erica writes back, basically says to her, mate, you missed your chance, we have already made the decisions.  Chippy, meanwhile, complains publicly that the government, AKA Erika Stanford, hasn't been consulting with him and Willow Jean on the NCEA changes.  So, tell me now, having heard that, what do you think is worse? That Willow Jean can't be bothered doing her job properly, or that Chippy has an amazing ability to lie with a smile?  Now, here are the key learnings from this incident.  Willow Jean is not a serious, hardworking, or clever person, and it is not ready to be a minister. Chris Hipkins is not as honest as his lovely smiling face would make you think. Labour is thin on the ground for talent if Willow Jean Prime is #8 in their party, and don't mess with Erica because she will pull a beautiful hit job on you, which is exactly what's happened here.  But also, Labour are just rude and unprofessional. It doesn't kill you to reply to a message.  Fri, 08 Aug 2025 05:06:15 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-wellington-council-doesnt-need-to-fence-off-the-sea/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-wellington-council-doesnt-need-to-fence-off-the-sea/ Rare thing to be able to say- but Wellington City Council has just made a sensible decision and voted against erecting a fence along the entire length of Kumutoto and Queen's Wharf. Now, if you know the part of Wellington that I'm talking about here, it's the area seaside of the TSB Bank Arena and Fergs and Shed 5 and Foxglove and so on.  That whole area at the moment has beautiful concrete walkways that have been laid, lovely seating and lighting and so on.  And then there's a little barrier either side. If there's sea on the other side, there's a little barrier that comes up to a concrete barrier, maybe mid-shin for you. Now, council officials planned to erect a fence instead - a full-length fence either side of every walkway, up to about 1.2 meters or so, lining almost the entire walkway, 3.5 km of it, at the cost of maybe as much as $30 million. And they wanted the council - probably because they realized how this is going to go down with people - to rush through voting on it without talking to the public about it first. For once, Wellington City Council has actually done the right thing and pumped the brakes here. I think, to be fair to the officials, that this is coming from a good place and that this is the recommendation in a coroner's report. A coroner has had a look at somebody who's fallen into the water, died in the drink, and said: you should put a fence up. Because there have been a few examples lately, especially young men who've got on the raz and then fallen into the water, and that has been the end of them. But - this is gonna sound harsh - I don't think that you fence off an entire walkway because some young people sometimes have a drink and then fall in. I don't want, just as much as you - I don't want people to die needlessly in accidents. But there is a balance to be struck here between personal responsibility and safety measures that we put up to stop stuff happening. I think you go for an intermediate thing here. You stick up some lights, you make sure people can see where they're going in the dark, but you do not fence off the entire thing because that is overkill. It is not normal for us to have fences between ourselves and the sea. Take Auckland, where I live at the moment.  Go for a walk under Auckland's Harbour Bridge, there are huge stretches exactly like this. No fence whatsoever. You're just walking there and there's the sea. It's a fall down, you just have to look after yourself and be careful.  Walk on piers anywhere in this country, they often do not have fences. You've just got to watch where you're going. If you chuck up a fence, you stop people doing what they're supposed to do near the sea, which is sitting there looking at it, enjoying nature, or fishing off the walkway into the sea. Think about what the Wellington officials were trying to do here - they were literally fencing off the sea. When you fence off the sea, do you not think that you are going just a little bit too far? LISTEN ABOVE Thu, 07 Aug 2025 07:40:33 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-how-will-rucs-change-our-driving-behaviours/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-how-will-rucs-change-our-driving-behaviours/ So the Government just announced what they’re calling the biggest change to road funding in 50 years. Once these changes kick in, petrol taxes are out and RUCs - road user charges - are in, for everyone. Not just truckies, not just EV drivers, not just diesel users, every single one of us. This is not really a surprise, the Government flagged this two years ago. But now the work is starting and Cabinet has agreed to start changing the law on it. And generally, I think this is a good idea. It’s going to make it more transparent, as most of us have no idea how much we’re paying to use the road because it’s hidden in the petrol cost. But once it’s stripped out, it’s going to smack us in the face every month - or however often - we pay that bill. And it’s actually a lot, tax makes up almost half the cost of petrol. It’s also going to, if designed properly, change our behaviour for the better. Heavier cars should end up being charged more - as they should - because they do more damage to the roads. For example, electric vehicles, which are enormously heavy, will be pot-holing the road more than a lighter Suzuki Swift. That should, if we respond rationally to pricing, move us towards lighter vehicles and away from the trend of 'bigger is better' - which is better for road maintenance.  But everything hangs off on enforcement. Because this is ripe for gaming.  The same people who don't get a WOF and don't get a rego now won't get their RUCs. So if you’re going from a simple system where it gets taken at the pump to a more complex 'count the Ks and file the paperworks system',  how will you be sure everyone does it? In an announcement light on detail - that’s the question I have. But in theory, it's a good idea. LISTEN ABOVE Wed, 06 Aug 2025 07:36:44 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-why-have-we-had-such-a-bad-run-of-child-abuse-incidents/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-why-have-we-had-such-a-bad-run-of-child-abuse-incidents/ I want to talk about kids being bashed by their families. We've had a really bad run of it - I don't know if you've realized - in the last few weeks. As far as I can see, just in the last 8 weeks, we've had the toddler in the suitcase, and we've had the baby in the bin in Auckland. We've also had a 2-month-old go to hospital with serious injuries that happened today, we've had a 3-month-old taken to hospital in Wellington in June, and we've had a 6-month-old critically injured at a Foxton Beach house in July. And we've hardly talked about this. I mean, we've talked about the toddler in the suitcase yesterday, world media talked about it too because it is so bizarre, it's hard to ignore. We also talked about the baby in the bin, that got about a day's worth of coverage, again, because that was pretty out there - putting a baby in a bin.  But everything else, almost no coverage. Now, do you know why that is? I mean, part of it is obviously that this is now not unusual anymore. We just bash our babies all the time in this country apparently - but also because you're not actually allowed to talk about it. I don't know if you realize this, but the moment that Oranga Tamariki, which is the new CYFS, uplifts a kid, the Family Court orders basically automatic blanket suppression on it. Which means the police can't say anything, it means OT itself can't say anything, it means the media can't say anything. So the news coverage just basically dies. We get: "baby's gone to hospital," and that's the end of it. No more coverage. It's actually only when the child dies that we can talk about it in detail because there is now no young person to protect anymore. Now, isn't that the opposite of what we want? I mean, I think this is doing our kids a disservice.  I understand why we did this in the first place, why we put these suppression orders in - the idea was to protect the privacy of these young people. But what it is also doing is protecting the privacy of the thugs in their families who put them in hospital or in the suitcase or in the bin. And what it also means is that no one then talks about what's going on. We're not horrified by the detail because there is no detail, so we don't talk about it, including politicians - and they should be the ones pitching solutions. At the rate that we're bashing our kids, this should be an election issue every single election - but it's not because we hardly talk about it because of the rules. So surely the rules should change. LISTEN ABOVE Tue, 05 Aug 2025 07:40:10 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-our-kids-education-is-too-important-to-muck-around/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-our-kids-education-is-too-important-to-muck-around/ You can't accuse Erica Stanford of mucking around, can you? NCEA is gone. Marks out of 100 are back, grades from A to E are back, needing to pass 4 subjects at least in order to get the qualification is back. Now, how long have we been talking about the need to do this? About the fact that NCEA is rubbish, that it's been gamed, that it's not respected by employers, that it's not understood by parents? How long have we talked about this?  And then within 18 months of Erica Stanford taking over the education portfolio, the changes are made.  This is absolutely, by the way, the right thing to do. Nowhere, in none of the assessments of what's happening at NCEA Level 1, 2 or 3, do you hear anyone say - hey, you know what, this is a good system. It's always criticism. The ERA had a look at NCEA Level 1 last year and they found such big problems with that they recommended getting rid of it. NZQA last year found only half of year 12 students actually finished 3 full subjects. They didn't even get to do 3 full subjects, but they somehow managed to pass NCEA. NZCER found that learning was not the focus of school at NCEA level anymore, assessment was. The OECD two years ago found what we always know is going on lately and our ability to read, write and do maths was slipping. It had now fallen below the OECD average. The NZQA Insights paper found a huge number of kids got Level 3 because it's easy, but UE, the old equivalent, they couldn't get it because it's not easy.  Now, none of this is news to us, right? Some of these reports actually date back to 2018, 7 years ago. Yet NCEA hasn't been scrapped until now. Now, this is brave, because any change this big is brave, but especially, it's brave right now at a time when secondary school teachers are already dealing with a lot. They have a curriculum refresh on the go. They've got new compulsory exams already now, they've got this. They are busy and they're about to get busier. And while I feel for them, and I do, our kids are too important and their education is too important to muck around. LISTEN ABOVE Mon, 04 Aug 2025 07:31:55 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-was-our-government-too-relaxed-about-the-tariffs/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-was-our-government-too-relaxed-about-the-tariffs/ So, was our government too relaxed about the tariffs then?   Cause this is a shock today – isn't it? To find out that we’ve just been bumped up to 15% while Australia and dozens of other countries have stayed on 10%.  Now, it seems to be related, most likely, to our balance of trade and that the US has a trade deficit with us. So we get 15%, but then a trade surplus with Australia, so they get 10%. So perhaps it was inevitable and unavoidable, as long as the balance of trade sat like that.  But then, on the other hand, Australia did kind of lock that in as well. They lifted their ban on US beef imports while we did nothing. Should we have done something similar Because if there's one thing that we know about Donald Trump, it's that he's a trader.  South Korea had their tariff dropped from 25% to 15% by promising to buy $100 million worth of LNG. Sir Keir Starmer sucked up to Trump with a letter from King Charles.   Now we don’t actually know what our diplomats were doing, because they were fairly guarded about it. But the vibe that we kept getting from ministers and officials every time we asked about it was, ‘not a lot going on, we’ll see how this goes, we’re on 10%, we’re no worse than anyone else’  That’s the trouble, though. We are now worse than other people. We export beef to the US, Australia exports beef to the US. Their beef now gets 10%, ours gets 15%.  Now, we can argue about whether US consumers are really going to switch up their $11.50 New Zealand steak if the Aussie steak is only 50 cents cheaper. I mean, what's really the difference between $11.50 and $11? But I chose a butter last night because it was $1 cheaper than the other butter, so maybe they will, which brings me to the question that I asked at the start of this.  Were we too relaxed?  Because we definitely and quite deliberately opted for Winston's head below the parapet approach. But maybe what we should have done was opted for the same approach that Albanese and Starmer took, which is to suck up instead. Given where we are and where they are - both their countries are now on 10% and we're sitting on 15%.  LISTEN ABOVE  Fri, 01 Aug 2025 05:46:28 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-andrew-dickens-heres-my-concern-about-the-emergency-alerts/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-andrew-dickens-heres-my-concern-about-the-emergency-alerts/ So the national emergency alarm that bugged a nation was the big talking point in New Zealand today. There's a million stories about the alarm, and here's mine:  The first alarm yesterday afternoon at 4:30pm I welcomed. I'd been out and about and didn't know about the Russian earthquake. So I looked up the story and quickly ascertained there were hours before this could become a problem. This was important because my partner was commuting home on a ferry at 5:40pm and we needed to know if anything would happen. I checked the AT app and phoned her and the day continued on as normal. The next alarm this morning was interesting. We knew of the threat and we knew that it was around about then that waves would arrive. So I expected an update on the wave strength after tsunami monitoring across the oceans. None of that info was there. It was the same alert as last night. So, again, we looked up the story and again, we decided it would be fine so Helen went off to catch the 8am ferry. As she left, she said if there's going to be a wave then she'd rather be on a big boat than on the esplanade. I think that was a joke.   As it turned out everybody ignored the alert this morning. People walked dogs on beaches. The north-western motorway causeway did not close. Nor did Tamaki Drive. Then the Minister came on with Kerre to explain why we had these alarms. I thought the main takeaway from that was so that we could make an informed decision. Which my family did. So I don't mind the alerts. I'd rather have a false alarm than no alarm at all in a dangerous decision. But the fear here is that people will begin to ignore all alerts and not make informed decisions - and that could end badly. But my main concern is that the information did not seem to be updated in the 12 hours after the earthquake hit.  I wonder if our ocean monitoring is working - and if it isn't, then that's the real concern. LISTEN ABOVE Thu, 31 Jul 2025 07:48:30 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-is-it-really-the-governments-fault-the-gang-numbers-cracked-the-10-000-mark/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-is-it-really-the-governments-fault-the-gang-numbers-cracked-the-10-000-mark/ You know that story about the gang numbers cracking the 10,000 mark? That's classic gotcha politics, isn't it? It doesn't count when the number is 9,999, but once it hits 10,000 - or in this case, 10,009 - it's a thing, and it's the Government's fault. Is it the Government's fault though? I mean, should we actually be angry at Mark Mitchell for this one? I don't think so. I think that what we're seeing right now is the result of stuff that has already happened, mainly- with the deportation of criminals from Australia and the recession that we're in. Recessions lead to an increase in crime for obvious reasons, and the deportation of serious criminals will lead to an increase in gang numbers - probably for a while yet actually - until the likes of the Comancheros and any other heavy outfit that's been brought here from Australia has maxed out its recruitment drive in New Zealand. I think it's highly ironic that Ginny Andersen is the one moaning about this. Do you need me to remind you of Ginny Andersen? Ginny Andersen was one of Labour's run of Police Ministers who totally took their foot off the throat of the gangs when they were in power. Ginny Andersen was the Police Minister at the time that the gang was basically allowed to take over Opotiki for the tangi. Remember that? At least under this Government and this particular Police Minister, police have been given the understanding that they are to crack down on gangs.  There have been a huge number of arrests. There are no gang tangi taking over small town roads anymore and there are no gang patches. Laura, the producer, lives out in West Auckland. She reckons she used to see a gang patch every single day, but doesn't see them now. None at all. Now, it doesn't mean that the gang members are gone. You can still see them around the place, they just walk around in their colours, you know, without the patches. Just look for someone wearing an unusual amount of primary colour red. That generally denotes a Mongrel Mob member. Look for somebody with a lot of yellow going on, that's generally somebody from the Comancheros. Lots of primary blue, that'll be your Black Power there. I saw one in his gang colours in Bunnings the other day. But at least they do not have the belief that they can walk around intimidating good people in public places because they don't have their patch on - and them being stripped of that belief actually counts for a lot. Now, I'm not happy the gang numbers have gone up, but they have. And I expect they're gonna keep going up for a while until this economy turns around and the pool of recruits available to the Aussie imports starts drying up. That is not the fault of this Government and it is also not the fault of this Police Minister. And what counts for a lot more is at least these gangs are being cracked down on now. LISTEN ABOVE Wed, 30 Jul 2025 07:38:26 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-heres-why-sir-michael-hill-was-an-example-to-us-all/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-heres-why-sir-michael-hill-was-an-example-to-us-all/ Sad news today - Sir Michael Hill, jeweller, has passed away. Again, he's another larger-than-life figure in New Zealand business - the likes of which we don't seem to be making anymore. Now, I don't know if you realize - I mean, we've all grown up with Michael Hill just being a name we knew - but I don't know if you realize how amazing his story was. He did not start his jewellery business until he was 40 years old. Up til then, he'd been working as a manager in his family's jewellery business. He left school at 16 and headed straight there. He was there for 23 years, got married and had a couple of kids. But one day, his house burnt down. And the story goes that when he was watching his house go up in flames - literally - he decided he needed to change things. So he started his own shop and it was a success. It was more successful than his uncle's business. So he opened seven shops in seven years, and that was a success. So he then decided to open another 70 in seven years. And now, his business is global. It's in New Zealand, it's in Australia, it's in Canada. He's worked with Kim Kardashian, he's designed his own golf course, he has a luxury super yacht, he's got himself a knighthood. And isn't it remarkable, when you think about it, that all of those things happened after he took a massive risk when he turned 40? I mean, 40 is an age when most of us are either at the peak of our careers or absolutely firmly settled in what we're doing. Imagine just tipping it all up and deciding to start your own business at 40. What I love about Michael Hill's story the most was that he did the same thing that many successful people do: he set goals and he visualized them. He wrote his goals down for years in advance - seven years, sometimes even as many as 30 years. And then he imagined what it would be like when he was actually doing that and had achieved those goals. Successful people tell you to do this time and time again. But before you even get to the point of setting that goal, you have to believe that you can achieve it. And he clearly believed it in spades, and he thinks not enough of us believe what we can achieve. He was more, obviously, than just a man who was into money. He promoted art. He was very good at violin - in fact, so good, he founded an international violin competition for young players. He donated to health research. He took his New Zealand business to the world. And he showed, yet again, that you can dream big from a small place like Whangārei. He is an inspiration and he is a loss. But more importantly, he is an example to us all. We just need to set our goals and then go for it. LISTEN ABOVE Tue, 29 Jul 2025 07:11:37 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-heres-why-the-surcharge-ban-will-fix-nothing/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-heres-why-the-surcharge-ban-will-fix-nothing/ The news of the day, politically, is that surcharges are gone, as the Government's just banned them. You know what I'm talking about here, right? They're the little extra amount that you get pinged when you turn up at the dairy and you use your credit card, or you use your paywave - it's gone from May next year. The big sell behind this is basically that it's to help you with the cost of living crisis. Now, I hate to do this because I know you're thinking, "Oh, yay." And I'm totally gonna rain on that parade for you. Don't get excited, this is gonna fix nothing. You are still gonna end up paying that cost somehow, probably just through the cost of the bottle of milk that you're buying. Or your haircut, or your sushi or whatever it is - it's gonna be built into the price because the business still has the cost. Nothing is changing there. They've still got to pay that merchant fee. Now, a merchant fee is a very complicated set of charges which the business gets lumped with. And most businesses actually have no bloody idea what makes up that merchant fee. There's a fee from the credit card companies, there's a fee for moving money from the banks, there's the EFTPOS providers - the whole thing gets lumped into the merchant fee and that has not gone away. What's only gone away is the business's ability to be able to recover the cost of some of that through the surcharge. And by the way, the cost of that thing is actually quite big. I've read about one business - just one shop - that pays about $14,000 in a year just for that, just for the merchant fee, to be able to do business electronically. Now, what's going to happen if you go to that shop is, because that guy can't now pass it on to you with a 2 percent, 0.7 percent, 1 percent surcharge or whatever, he's simply going to add it to the cost of his product so that across the year, he makes that $14,000 back. Also, another reason why you shouldn't get excited about it is that this ban does not include anything that you buy online. So you're buying your Air New Zealand tickets? You're still gonna be paying that little $6 handling fee. You're buying some tickets for a concert from Ticketmaster? You're still paying that handling fee. Maybe you want to head along to Banksy? Yep, you're still gonna be paying yourself a nice little $8 handling fee. And the problem with that is that these are some of the most egregious examples, I would have thought, of surcharges just bearing no resemblance to reality - but they still slip through this. So instead of actually sorting out the backroom problems and the real gnarly issues - what has been charged by the banks and the EFTPOS companies and the credit card companies and really excessive surcharges - the Government's just taken the easy option and brought in a ban on the little stuff you buy from the dairy. Good headline. Unfortunately, though, just a charade. LISTEN ABOVE Mon, 28 Jul 2025 07:34:15 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-duplessis-allan-we-need-to-talk-about-gaza/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-duplessis-allan-we-need-to-talk-about-gaza/ First up, we need to talk about Gaza.  I'm not gonna be graphic, and, and I'm not gonna talk about what it is hap what's happening there in detail. You already know, you can choose to read about it yourself, and I recommend that you do just to the point that you can kind of handle it.    Credit, today, to Anthony Albanese, the Prime Minister of Australia.   He has stopped pussyfooting around what's going on here. He's just put out a strongly worded statement this afternoon. He's demanding that Israel stop starving children to death and let in more aid.   He says, we call on Israel to comply immediately with its obligations under international law. Now that is a shed load better than the waffly joint statement we signed up earlier this week.    We need to get a spine on this, don't we?    I mean, our joint statement didn't even mention the word starvation or starving, or any variation on that word. It is watered down to the point of having absolutely no impact, and that is what it had, no impact.  Now I am not naive enough to think that New Zealand telling Israel off is going to change anything, but we've got to do something.   And if all we've got is words, then we're gonna have to use them.  Because maybe I am naive enough to believe that if enough world leaders call out Israel, name what is going on, don't pussyfoot around it, call the deliberate starvation for what it is.  If enough world leaders say, ‘you have got to stop this now’, and if enough leaders then enact sanctions on Israel, then surely Trump cannot ignore it anymore.   And Trump is the key here. He's the one we have to convince.  Now, I know that Israel still has hostages in those tunnels, and as I said earlier this week, Hamas must release them for this war to end.   But let me put this to you in very, very stark numbers.   10 hostages is not worth even one of those children's lives.   You do not starve a child to death to get 10 hostages out.   They are children.   I cannot believe that we are watching this happen and that we are letting this happen.  LISTEN ABOVE       Fri, 25 Jul 2025 07:15:10 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-did-the-closure-of-the-emergency-motels-drive-the-increase-in-rough-sleeping/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-did-the-closure-of-the-emergency-motels-drive-the-increase-in-rough-sleeping/ Let's be honest with each other about something. That increase in rough sleeping that the cities are anecdotally reporting to that homelessness report will be caused by the shutting down of those emergency motels. I know the Government's trying to avoid having to admit that, but that is the big thing that's changed since the election. They've shut down the motels and some of the people who were in those motels, or who might have gone to those motels, have ended up on the streets. And I don't think that that's unexpected. That is not an unexpected consequence of taking a tougher line on the motels. Now, don't see me as tough or hard-hearted on this. I don't want anyone sleeping on the streets and I venture most of us don't. But I still think that shutting down those motels was a good idea because that was out of hand, wasn't it? I mean, spending $1.4 billion on emergency accommodation in six years was just way too much money. I prefer the line the Government's taking at the moment, which is to put the obligation where it actually should be, which is on family and friends. Which is to say that if someone finds themselves, God forbid, without a roof over their heads, the first place that they should go for help is not the state. It should be their mum or their brother or their auntie or their son or their friend. And only then when all of their options are exhausted and they really have no one to turn to, then should they turn to the state. But that is not what was happening with the emergency motels. The state was the first port of call. If you think about it, the state has stepped in to take over a lot of roles that we normally would have relied on each other for. And in some cases, it's unavoidable and in some cases it's for the best, for example - police, or whatever. But in this case, let's be honest, $1.4 billion is a lot of money that could have been spent on anything else that we are running dry on right now. Healthcare, cops, education. So actually, the first place you turn to if you don't have somewhere to sleep is your family. Only at the end of the road should the state step in. LISTEN ABOVE Thu, 24 Jul 2025 07:11:37 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-why-did-nicola-willis-hype-the-fonterra-meeting/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-why-did-nicola-willis-hype-the-fonterra-meeting/ So guess what's happening after Nicola Willis' butter meeting with Fonterra last night? Nothing. After hyping the meeting, after Mikey chasing Miles down the street, after the news going live with the banner across the TV that the Fonterra meeting is underway, after all of that - nothing is happening because nothing can happen, because Fonterra's not ripping us off. We're simply paying the same international price as everyone for butter, which Nicola knows because she's an intelligent woman and because she used to work for Fonterra as well. So, nothing has come from the meeting. There is no announcement about what is being fixed. Miles Hurrell is not resigning or apologizing, and the price of butter is not dropping. All that has happened is that Nicola Willis has fronted up for the media today and told them that Miles Hurrell will talk to them at some time soon to explain how the price of butter works, which is a nothing outcome. In which case, you have to ask yourself the question, what was the point of the meeting? If Nicola actually truly does understand the mechanics of butter pricing, and presumably then also understands that Fonterra isn't ripping us off and also had no plans to announce anything after this, why hype the meeting? I can answer that question for you. Because she wanted to pass the buck. She wanted to blame Fonterra, because National is feeling the pressure over the fact that Labour is now more trusted to deal with the cost of living crisis than National is  - according to the Ipsos survey, which is out this month. And because the heat has been cranked up on National, who have talked a very big game about getting the economy back on track - and yet 18 months in, it's still very much off track to the extent that people cannot afford butter. Nicola tried to shift the blame from National to Fonterra and it didn't work. Now, the lesson here is that performance politics doesn't work. Blaming the supermarkets but doing nothing, blaming Fonterra but doing nothing, blaming the banks but doing nothing, that kind of stuff doesn't work. And in fact, it's risky, it runs the risk of backfiring, which is exactly what's happening here. LISTEN ABOVE Wed, 23 Jul 2025 07:41:45 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-skys-purchase-of-tv3-is-good-for-everyone/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-skys-purchase-of-tv3-is-good-for-everyone/ The big news of the day is another $1 deal in the media, which probably tells you everything you need to know about the state of the industry. But this is, on balance, good news for everyone - I would have thought. It's good for you, for viewers, good for Sky, and good for Three. And I'm gonna work backwards on that - Let's start with TV3. It's good news for Three and for the people who work there, because Three continues to exist. A very real alternative must have been for Warner Brothers Discovery, the owners, to shut Three down completely. Now that they've sold it for $1 to Sky, it continues. It's good news for Sky, because it gives Sky TV a chance to make money again off stuff that they already own. For example, and I'm just picking this randomly, let's say White Lotus. Sky TV buys the broadcast rights for the country to White Lotus, they earn the money off White Lotus by sticking it on Sky TV, sticking it on Neon, and we pay a subscription to watch it. Now, they can wait a few months, maybe until all of us who've paid for it have watched it, and then they can dump White Lotus for free on TV3 and Freeview - which is TV3's app - and then they can make money off White Lotus all over again through advertising around the free content. Now, they can already do this with their Sky Open channel, which is a free-to-air channel they already have, but who even knows where on the TV Sky Open is? I have no bloody idea what number it is. Never even watched it before in my life. And does it have an app? Wouldn't know. I know everything you need to know about TV3, I've got the TV3 app, I know where to find it. There is a very strong brand attached to Three. More importantly, I would have thought for Sky TV - this strengthens its arm for sports, right? Sky TV has now got to be the only real choice in town for sports content. Beforehand at least domestically, TVNZ was a real competitor, at least for the free-to-air portion, given so many people watch TVNZ - both its on-air channels and its app. But now, Sky TV's got Three - same same. It doesn't need to have anything to do with TVNZ. Finally, it's good for you and me that this deal was struck today, because who doesn't want excellent free content landing on an app that you already have or a TV channel that you already watch? So good day all round, I would say. LISTEN ABOVE Tue, 22 Jul 2025 07:26:44 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-ryan-bridge-just-because-the-brits-are-lowering-their-voting-age-it-doesnt-mean-we-will/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-ryan-bridge-just-because-the-brits-are-lowering-their-voting-age-it-doesnt-mean-we-will/ Just because the Brits are lowering their voting age, it doesn't mean we will.  Unless we end up with a Labour government.  I asked Erica Stanford and Carmel Sepuloni about Starmer's move in the UK this morning.  Erica was a hard no. Didn't like it.  Sepuloni loved the change. She said it’s progressive and it's where we should be heading. However, she didn't say if Labour would campaign on it - because they're currently a party with no policy.  The whole thing's a non-starter anyway... because this country has much bigger problems than whether 16-year-olds can vote.  And even if we did go there you would surely have to take another look at the drinking age and the justice system.  As one of our viewers pointed out this morning: 16 and 17 year olds are currently dealt with by the youth justice system, unless the crime is really serious, like murder.  So how can you have a 16-year-old electing adults to make laws when the consequences for breaking them don't apply equally to them.  It's been a wonderful academic exercise today chatting about lowering the voting age, but the reality is it won’t happen anytime soon.   LISTEN ABOVE  Fri, 18 Jul 2025 07:30:30 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-ryan-bridge-the-government-needs-to-give-us-the-truth-about-boot-camps-and-charter-schools/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-ryan-bridge-the-government-needs-to-give-us-the-truth-about-boot-camps-and-charter-schools/ How many times have you heard the Prime Minister say this Government is different because it will set targets, track progress and be open about its actual results? That's how we're going to get back on track, that's what we've heard from National so many times. And what's more important than turning around education and getting on top of youth crime? Not much. Which is why they've got charter schools and bootcamps. Everybody said 'yep', those kids need sorting out in the case of bootcamps - or those kids deserve more choice in the case of charter schools. But now this week, we’ve heard from the agencies involved in these programmes and they've decided they won't be telling the public how many students are enrolled at the new charter schools. And in the bootcamps- they won’t talk about how many of the kids are re-offending. They’ve given various excuses for this, but none of them stack up. They reckon telling the public general details, no specifics or names, about youth re-offending is potentially harmful to vulnerable kids - which sounds very cotton-wool, wraparound luvvie Labour for the the big game this Government talked, don't you think? The fact is, people can’t trust a system or a programme they know nothing about. When you're not totally upfront about the results, it looks like you're trying to hide something. And you only hide news when it’s bad. So either they know charter schools and boot camps are a bad idea, which I doubt, otherwise why would you do them? Or -they’re scared of failure on key programmes a year out from the election. Here’s some free advice: give us the truth and let us make up our own minds. LISTEN ABOVE Thu, 17 Jul 2025 07:10:14 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-ryan-bridge-we-owe-kiwi-schoolkids-an-apology/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-ryan-bridge-we-owe-kiwi-schoolkids-an-apology/ We owe our kids an apology. School students of all ages in this country have been used as guinea pigs in failed experiments that have been demonstrably bad for their learning. We've had two announcements from the Government this week that prove this. First, the latest NCEA maths results from low decile schools. They improved by around 70 percent. 19.8 percent passed the co-requisite test last year. In June it was 34 percent. This is, obviously, excellent news. Well done to those students for putting in the hard work. The begging question is why and how on earth did this happen? I asked both Erica Stanford and Chris Hipkins, the former Education Minister, this question. Both agreed it was a more relentless focus on the basics. Both agreed that teachers have been teaching too much 'fluffy' other stuff to students and their results in core subjects have been declining as a result. Both politicians blamed the other party for changing where the focus goes. And that's politics. But it's the students who've missed out. They're the ones who won't get those years back. They're the ones who've missed out. They're the ones who will pay the price in future for missing out on a basic education. And two, the open plan, barn-yard style classrooms - the home of distracted learning. The Government today announced they won't build any new ones. Which, again, is welcome news. But the question is - why any were built in the first place? The Key government built some and Labour carried on. All of this on the advice of boffins at the Ministry of Education who've clearly never stepped foot in an actual classroom. Now, the Minister says they've done some actual research and realised they're a terrible idea. This is how Erica Stanford politely described how schools are coping with these classes at present: "There are schools who still have them and they operate in them the best they possibly can. They have trained their teachers to work in them, they've got really good acoustics. They're teaching children at different levels, some on chairs, some on the floor to reduce the noise, and they're doing the best they can." I know, totally ridiculous. The reality is, we can't solely blame out kids for their failure to learn. We can also blame ill-informed or ideologically-driven experiments by the Ministry of Education, the unions and politicians. Whether it's the Ministry in Wellington, the unions or politicians, we can't solely blame our kids for their failure to learn. LISTEN ABOVE Wed, 16 Jul 2025 07:14:43 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-ryan-bridge-we-really-shouldnt-need-central-government-to-clarify-things-for-local-councils/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-ryan-bridge-we-really-shouldnt-need-central-government-to-clarify-things-for-local-councils/ The Government's introduced a bill today to get local Government back focused on the basics. But the fact they've strayed so far from potholes, rubbish and waste water is as much our fault as the councillors and mayors running the budgets. The Government's bill contains the wildly controversial stuff like: "Prioritising core services when managing finances and setting rates." And "new financial performance measures for councils, with a requirement for regular public reporting." How scandalous. Honestly. We shouldn't need central Government to spend time and money clarifying such simple principles to their local Government counterparts, but it's 2025, and here we are. We shouldn't need a bill to stop wasteful spending. We just need more Andrew Tripes. He's the Whanganui mayor overseeing a 2.2 percent rate increase this year. Much less than the average 8.7 percent across the country. He went on RNZ this morning and basically said it how it really is. If you want low rates, spend less, save money, have a plan. And stick to it. Like Dave Latele, he says: No excuses. He cut the naff curb-side food waste bin nonsense. That saved them 1.1 percent. Why has Auckland kept its scheme when most don't even use it? The fact is that this is all our fault. Not the fault of the councils or the mayors - and certainly not central Government who's sweeping in to try and save the day. It's us, the voters. We obviously don't care enough about council waste. Otherwise we'd have voted to get rid of it. It's a simple as that. Voter turnout in 2022 was 36 percent. In Auckland, our largest city, it was 31 percent! In some areas of Auckland it was only 20 percent. No wonder we're tripping over cycleways and raised crossings, paying for cooking classes at community centres and drowning in unnecessarily, infuriatingly exorbitant rates bills. LISTEN ABOVE Tue, 15 Jul 2025 07:25:16 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-ryan-bridge-does-anyone-else-have-a-problem-with-bus-lanes/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-ryan-bridge-does-anyone-else-have-a-problem-with-bus-lanes/ Put your hand up if you've ever had a bus suddenly pull out in front of your car while you're driving along, minding your own beeswax. I know. It's happened to everyone. They're long things aren't they, buses? So you can be halfway past one when they pull out, and all of a sudden you're slamming on the brakes or you're pushed into the wrong lane. I don't mind admitting that until this very morning, I had assumed that buses must have had the right of way. They seem to take no prisoners. They have no mercy. They're as ruthless on the road as the All Blacks at the Cake Tin on Saturday night. But I was reading an article this morning from the Spinoff about a bunch of changes to road rules that Chris Bishop wants to enact. One of them is giving buses right of way when they're exiting bus stops. So if you're driving a car, you must yield. Give way. Slow down, or more likely, stop completely to let them out. The theory is that buses carry more passengers than cars. If we prioritise the buses, more people will get where they need to go. Productivity increases. And we're all better off. And you know what? I can get onboard with that. It makes sense, and I sort of thought that was the law anyway. But if we motorists are going to do something nice for the buses, then I want something in return. I want those stupid green bus lanes that sit empty most of the day as traffic piles up around them back. I want us to reclaim the road for the people who are actually using it. I understand the need for rush-hour/peak bus lanes. But I don't understand why they must be bus lanes 24/7 when they're 1 - not being used by buses and 2 - causing massive delays, inconvenience and lost productivity to the rest of us. The default position is that bus lanes are 24/7 unless sign posted otherwise. The one in particular that rips my nightie is in central Auckland - where most bus lanes are 24/7. Does anybody else have this problem - or am I just another selfish motorist fuming in midday traffic? LISTEN ABOVE Mon, 14 Jul 2025 07:28:24 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-ryan-bridge-wellington-is-in-for-a-tempestuous-election-campaign/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-ryan-bridge-wellington-is-in-for-a-tempestuous-election-campaign/ The Wellington Mayoral race was supposed to be winding down into boring town.  Tory went wild, had a tipsy whirlwind on Courtenay Place. A bit of booze, a bit of dine and dashing. It was salacious, it was scandalous.  As stories of late-night escapades and unpaid bills and missed council meetings flooded the newspapers, the streets flooded, literally. Every time a scandal burst onto the front page of The Post, so did a pipe. It was as if Wellington’s infrastructure were protesting the incompetence at City Hall.  Poonamis. An onslaught of cycleways. Crime. And still no second Mount Victoria tunnel.  It all came to a head, of course. Andrew Little entered the chat. Tory pulls out.  And from here it was meant to get boring. You know in an action movie when all the crazy stuff happens, there's half an hour left on the clock, but the world's been saved by superhero XYZ? All the main cast is safe and well and life goes on happily ever after?  That's where I thought we were with Wellington's Mayoral Race.  Well, Wellington, you're getting a sequel – within the original.   Mayoral candidate Ray Chung sent his colleagues an email, regaling them with a story a friend told him while he was out walking his dog. In it, he says, Tory Whanau had drug-fuelled tempestuous sex with a bunch of young guys. He also claims he was told that she had pendulous soft breasts.   It's starting to smell a little bit like Ontario in Canada. Remember the mayor who was accused of smoking crack? Just scandal through a local election campaign.  To get real for a minute, two things. One: Tory denies the story completely and utterly rejects it.   Two: Ray sent this to three fellow councillors on their personal email addresses. So, it was a private email, he claims. And Ray reckons that one of those people has leaked it to Tory, who has leaked it to the press.   So then you start to wonder, is one of Ray’s former fellow council mates now turning on him, perhaps for political reasons? I don't know the answer to that question. All I really know is that Wellington, you need some popcorn because you're in for one hell of a tempestuous election campaign.    Fri, 11 Jul 2025 05:47:45 Z