Kerre Woodham: Can you see a light at the end of the cost of living tunnel?
Kerre Woodham Mornings PodcastShow Notes
There's a story in the New Zealand Herald this morning about a young couple in Hawke's Bay who are earning good coin, above the average between them, but they're barely able to make ends meet. This is the cost of living election – at least that's what the media outlets are telling us. But I don't know if you heard Enda Brady on with Mike this morning. Have a listen to what he had to say around the British budget. "People are worried about energy bills, cost of living, food. I went to the petrol station earlier on to get petrol, so I looked at the prices specifically for you, Mike. We are looking at $4.02 a litre for diesel, and I pay $3.52 for unleaded." The British Government releasing the budget said they just want to be able to give ordinary working families breathing room. This is a budget for, in the UK, for the immediate future. It's not setting the country up to recover, it's just trying to give your ordinary working family breathing room. Things are tight there and they have been for a while. People are finding out what they can do without and what are necessities. They're doing that here, but they're also doing it around the world. Post-Covid and the money printing, nations who went for that strategy are paying the piper and it's grindy. The prices paid for everyday items such as food, energy, transport, and household bills have risen by between 59% and 78% since the year 2000 in France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Between 2021 and 2023 prices increased by 12 to 15% in the four countries. Wages didn't keep up and because prices don't fall back once inflation eases, many households are still feeling the squeeze today. It would be the same in the UK as well. In Australia, one in three households are going hungry as the cost of living crisis bites, according to a charity. Many people are reducing meal portions to make ends meet and they're being forced to cut the use of shampoo, toothpaste, and soap. Really cutting it right back down. In Australia, inflation data to be released this week is expected to confirm ongoing price pressures for household essentials, prompting a further interest rate hike from the Reserve Bank when it meets at the start of next month. The biggest increase in prices over the past year has been in petrol, up by almost 14%, but steep lifts in other essentials that Aussies consider their own, like beef 9.4%, lamb 10.1%, milk 8%. Sound familiar? Is there anywhere in the world that is doing just fine? I know we have a number of listeners who listen from various points of the globe. Is this the same story where you are? Are governments really finding it tough to meet their obligations, to meet their commitments, to look after those citizens who are not doing well, trying to find jobs for young ones? Again, Enda Brady referred to that in the UK – they've got more than a million young people who aren't in education, training, or jobs. People are really struggling to pay the basic household bills. Same in Europe, same in Australia. Doesn't make you feel any better, I suppose, if you're wondering how the hell you're going to pay the household rates, but this is not particular or peculiar to New Zealand. Economies are correcting and contractions, as at least half the population knows, are painful. There are signs that things are getting better globally. A lot of it will be dependent on the situation in the US, Iran, Israel, and that calming down. But even above and beyond that, there are signs things are getting better. Xero reported more business confidence, more sales, more employment, more jobs advertised and people employed. And this has been, this wasn't a blip in the data, this has been ongoing. So things are slowly, slowly improving. But in the meantime, in your house, what are you doing without? What have you found is a non-essential just to get by until things improve? Insurances, have you kept all the insurances? A young family I know who should be doing just fine, they concede that
More from Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast
When I look at Labour's campaign and I look at National's campaign, it's like, look, I'll do it for you next time. Seriously, when something is being done so badly, you think, you know what? I can do that so much better. They've had shocking campaigns, both of the main parties. Just negative, silly stuff. And yesterday, Labour had an absolute clanger. Of all the issues and all the policies that Labour could have come up with to attract voters, to point out deficiencies in the Coalition Government, why on earth did they have to decide on housing as one of their last big pushes before the election? You'll have heard Kieran McAnulty yesterday announcing a new rent to buy scheme that would allow public housing tenants to save for a house deposit. $100 a week from their taxpayer subsidised rent would be credited towards a house deposit with the funds held in a trust account. The scheme would help people save $5,200 a year, Labour says, and allow tenants to accumulate enough to put down a deposit on a home. Public housing tenants would have the option to buy the home they're living in. Labour said that for each house sold, three more would be built in its place. Really? What's your track record like on building houses, Labour? Pretty damn poor. Three more would be built in its place? Labour would have been turfed out after one term were it not for Covid last time round because of their failures of execution when it came to policy. One of their biggest embarrassments was KiwiBuild, the building of houses. 100,000 houses were promised. Remember that? And everybody went, oh, I don't think so. No, no, I think you've got that wrong. And it wasn't just people like me having a rick and going, I don't think you'll be able to do 100,000, it was people in the industry going, no, that's not going to happen. No, they knew best, Labour did. They went ahead, they promised it. 100,000 houses would be built for hardworking Kiwis. Total amount of houses built: 2,003. Quite a big differential. 100,000 promised, 2,003 delivered. So forgive me if I call BS on Labour's ability to build three houses for every one sold, unless they go down the Kāinga Ora route where they damn near bankrupted the country building houses at any cost. We've only just got Kāinga Ora under control after the build at any cost order was given by the last Labour government. There are two policy areas Labour should be staying well away from: law and order and housing. They are proven failures in both areas, unless they're willing to spend anything at all and lock other young people out of the housing market by buying up, spending money we don't have, and paying it down on the never never. This latest announcement, if you are living, say, in GI in Auckland in a state house, which is being gentrified, a little suburb that's being gentrified, how long would you have to live there before you'd saved even for a 5% deposit? If you're living in Greymouth in a Kāinga Ora house, you might in seven and a half years have enough to put down a 5% deposit loan on your home. But it's sticking two fingers to hardworking young people who are working and who are renting and who are saving for their first home. And it is nothing like the capitalisation of family benefit that McAnulty referred to when he was talking to Heather du Plessis Allan last night. "There'd be many people listening to your show who bought their home or their parents bought their home by capitalising the child benefit. And that set them up for life. Now, we haven't had a scheme like that for a very long time. And the announcement today to expand the 5% deposit and also have a scheme to actually get Kāinga Ora tenants out of state housing, out of a poverty trap and into home ownership, I think is something that will benefit the whole country. And I reckon it'll actually get broad support across the political spectrum." Will it? I'll be fascinated to find out. If we look at capitalisation of the family benefit, that cam
The Transport Agency says it needs a long-term plan sooner rather than later for Awakino Gorge, as the vital Taranaki to Waikato link faces more closures. The stretch of State Highway 3 is closing every night until Thursday next week as transport crews work to restore the road following a slip earlier this year. It's been closed several times over the last year, causing long detours for drivers NZTA Project Manager Caleb Perry told Kerre Woodham they'll be looking to finish planning over the next three years. He says that'll be the driver for them to decide if they invest more money into the route, or if they need to explore more options. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The Awakino Gorge on State Highway 3 that connects Waikato to Taranaki will be closed for nine nights as of tonight. Every time there's a major storm it seems Karangahake Gorge between Paeroa and Waihi is closed. It was closed for five days this month. The Waiwera Gorge is open, then closed, then open, then closed. The Brynderwyns are a constant worry. Is it time to revisit our national highways and accept that what might have worked in 1923 —widening a dray track into a road— is not really fit for purpose in 2026? Sticks of gelignite blasting away through the Karangahake Gorge worked fine in 1875, but if you've driven through the gorge recently, looking like a goldfish with one eye out the side looking at the rock face, praying it stays up, the other goldfish eye looking out at the river and the road and hoping there's no landslip, you wonder how long these gorges are going to be drivable and whether it's worth patching them up, opening them, patching them up, opening them, patching them up, opening them. Round and round and round we go. We don't seem to be advancing. It's just spending hundreds of millions to stay in place. Transporting New Zealand says we have to start thinking about plan B when it comes to the transport network. They say when the Awakino Gorge is closed, it costs the sector up to a million dollars per day in additional travel time, fuel consumption, and vehicle operating costs. Transporting New Zealand, in the case of the Awakino Gorge, has suggested developing a 20km windy metal road, and suggested a one way route north for a couple of hours, then opening it for a couple of hours to the south. Which sounds like it would have been a brilliant thing to do in 1952, but in 2026, is that really the way to go when we're trying to connect two major provinces, two major exporting provinces, Taranaki and Waikato? I wouldn't have thought so. The New Plymouth mayor says he would sue NZTA if he could for their successive failures over the years, which have cost the people of his region millions and millions of dollars. Are our road networks still fit for purpose? Does it make sense to keep going over the same roads that were initially, in many cases, horse tracks, then dray roads, then roads for the old Model Ts? It worked back then. They made it work. And back then it was rip, shit and bust, hoots wahay, let's just blast our way through, and the quickest way to get anywhere is in a straight line between two points. Given the precarious state of the climate, given that the extremes are becoming the norm when it comes to the storms, the landslips, the torrential rain, do we need to redraw the map rather than keep retracing over existing lines? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The gangs, as we know, create wholesale damage and destruction in our society through their drug trafficking. Now it looks like they're causing wholesale damage to Labour. After roundly criticising members of the Greens and Te Pati Māori for visiting a mongrel mob gang pad and posing for photos, putting it on your social media, Labour leader Chris Hipkins ruled out his coalition partners holding the justice or police portfolios in any government he was in charge of. He was talking tough. Now it transpires one of his own MPs was campaigning with gang members, with a video circulating of Kerrin Leoni in a Labour jacket handing out Labour Party flyers to mobsters. Te Pati Māori's Orinii Kaipara, who appeared with Leoni in a Whakata Māori debate this week, threw the Tamaki Makaurau opponent under the bus during the debate by saying Leoni had recently been campaigning with gang members too. She did it too, miss. It wasn't just me. Kaipara said Leoni had since deleted a social media post about it after the kaka hit the fan over her posing with gang members. Leoni during the debate said, I have never been to a gang pad campaigning. I've got whanau who are gang members. I've never been campaigning at a gang pad. And then sought to clarify the situation in a Facebook post last night. "To be clear, I have not attended a gang pad at all during this campaign. I said at the debate, I have close whanau who are gang members. In early October, I attended a whanau function where some of those present were whanau gang members." If you've seen the video, it's a funny old whanau function. I mean, who am I to say how other people should hold their barbecues? But Leoni is clearly campaigning for Labour at the function. If she hadn't posted the video to social media, I'd say perhaps her case is different. You can't pick your relatives. For many families, you can have one brother who's a detective and another who's a senior gang member, and they all have to be able to still function as a family. I'd have sympathy if someone had taken a video or photo of Leoni in a T-shirt, shorts and jandals, having a BBQ with her brother at a whanau function. But she's in a Labour Party jacket, handing out Labour Party flyers, telling people to vote Labour and then posting it to social media. Apparently it's since been deleted. What kind of family function is that? It doesn't sound like a real thigh slapper to me. Not a guitar insight. Can it really be a family function if there's no singing and dancing around the BBQ? You're in your Labour Party jacket. You're handing out the flyers, you're saying vote Labour to get rid of this government. Is that a family function or is that campaigning just like a Orinii Kaipara and Hūhana Lyndon were doing? Sounds like campaigning to me. Yeah, nah. I'm sorry. I mean, Chris Hipkinson can talk tough, and I do have sympathy when you've got people who, I mean, you can't pick your relatives as my poor cousins know. I remember saying to a departed aunt, at a whanau function. She had very poor eyesight. I said, "it's me, Kerre." And she said, "yes, I know exactly who you are." In clipped tones. I said that little catch up with my aunt. She's never been a big fan and that's okay. You can't pick your relatives, but to say you're not campaigning, it sounded, come on, Kerrin Leoni, come clean. You might have a brother or whanau who are in the gangs and that's fine. But to say that you were just catching up at a family function, I don't buy it. Not in the Labour Party jacket, not handing out the flyers, not saying get rid of this government. That is not a family catch up, that is campaigning. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
David Seymour says he won't shy away race relations, despite previous backlash. The ACT Leader championed the Treaty Principles Bill to its first reading this term, sparking nationwide protests. This election ACT's promising to “end race-based hiring requirements”, prohibit cultural or spiritual practices in the public service, and to abolish the Waitangi Tribunal once historic claims are settled. Seymour told Kerre Woodham the idea New Zealand is divided by its treaty is not sustainable. He says he doesn't resile to not having the conversation, no matter how painful it may be. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.