Virginia Nicholls: Alcohol Beverage Council CEO on the health risks associated with alcohol

Every government minister will be going for the takeaways and cracking open a bottle of something tonight, won’t they?  

They might even put a movie on as well, but they’ll probably nod-off after a few minutes. 

Because that 100-day plan the boss dreamed-up, done and dusted. Delivered. KPIs met. It went to the wire with Shane leaving his big health announcement to the last minute. But we got there team! 

Christopher Luxon will be on the ministerial WhatsApp group telling them to enjoy the spring roll and chips, but reminding them that the next 100 days start on Monday. 

And, whatever you think of the Government, there’s probably one thing we can agree on: it’s not prone to sit around and over-think things. And, for you, that might be a good thing. It might not be, either. I’m probably somewhere in the middle. 

And while I can’t say it’s blown my socks off - I can say it’s exceeded my expectations on one thing. And because of that, I’m giving its first 100 days a pass mark. 

I’ll get to that shortly. And it’s probably how Christopher Luxon is feeling too. Because, as he has often said, he’s never really satisfied. Always thinks things can be done better. 

And with the first 100 days ticking over today, he’s already thinking about the next 100. So, it wasn’t bluster at the start - that’s how he’s going to keep on doing things. Quarterly targets. Every three months.  

As he himself admits, he’s running the country just like a chief executive runs a business or an organisation. 

And is he ever. Just look at the screws going on the public sector. Which I think is getting a bit out of control. Example being this nutbar situation where you’ve got one public department chief executive paying his own airfares to fly around the country and talk to staff about cost-cutting. 

But while the Prime Minister is on to the next 100 days, let’s have a think about how we rate the first 100.  

For starters, I’d describe them as: Stop and Start. 

The Stop bit is all the policies and initiatives of the last government that it’s pulled the plug on. Stop 3 Waters. Stop the Smoke-free stuff. Stop the blanket speed limit reductions. Stop the Auckland light rail project. Stop Fair Pay agreements. Stop the Lake Onslow hydro scheme. Stop the inter-island ferries project. And that’s just a few.   

The Start bit, is all the things that aren’t quite happening yet but, you know, ‘at least we’ve made a start’. 

And, let’s be honest, that’s probably acceptable in just the first 100 days. Especially when you compare it to the pace the last government seemed to work at. 

But I’ve felt —especially in the past couple of weeks— that the Government’s been more focused on ticking things off on the list so it can say it’s ticked things off... it’s felt more interested in that, than the substance of what it’s actually ticking off. 

And we know why that is. The clock’s been ticking. 100 days. Get it done.   

Which has meant that some of the stuff it’s announced feels pretty half-cocked to me. 

For example, its announcement the other day that the first of its boot camps for young criminal offenders would be up-and-running by the middle of the year. With Oranga Tamariki running it. 

Not run by Corrections or the military. But by Oranga Tamariki. How you have a child welfare organisation running what the Government describes as a “military-style academy” I’ll never know.  

But they had to announce something, so it’s been lumbered with Oranga Tamariki because the military obviously doesn’t want a bar of it. Nor Corrections. So social workers are now going to be running boot camps. 

The emergency housing changes announced on Wednesday and this daft idea or expectation that private landlords will take on tenants currently living in motels with a bit of a financial sweetener from the taxpayer and the option of kicking people out after 90 days. 

I don’t know about you, but every landlord I heard from about that said they wouldn’t be touching that with a bargepole. 

The gang patch ban. Fanciful, at best.  

The last thing on the list is healthcare targets, which Health Minister Shane Reti is announcing today.  

But, like I say, you can’t accuse the Government of sitting around and overthinking things. 

So, what is it, do you think, is this one thing I mentioned earlier where the Government has exceeded my expectations? And because of that, I’m giving its first 100 days a pass mark? 

It’s the fact that the coalition hasn’t fallen apart. When Christopher Luxon, David Seymour and Winston Peters signed the dotted line after all that to-ing and fro-ing after the election, I didn't expect it to last. 

It may still fall apart. Because, despite them being in coalition, I wouldn’t say Luxon, Seymour and Peters are singing from the same song sheet all the time. 

But it hasn’t fallen apart so far. Lord knows what it’s like behind the scenes. But we still have a government and, for me, that’s enough to give its first 100 days a pass mark. Not a merit. Not an excellence. But it’s better than I expected. 

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The pilot for military-style academies that are designed to turn around persistent young offenders will get underway by the middle of the year. Ten young people initially, and they'll spend up to four months —that is all the legislation allows— within their Academy.  

And therein lies the problem, because according to all the best experts and best practice, it takes at least 12 months to break old habits and establish new ones. But the legislation doesn't allow it, so the four-month pilot will go ahead in the middle of the year.  

It will be run along military lines, although under the auspices of Oranga Tamariki, and that bodes ill. They couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery. They don't seem to have been a terribly good manager of the young people in their care thus far.  

But there will also be a rehabilitation component and trauma informed care approach, whatever that means. I'm assuming counselling sessions, a psychological component to work on what is triggering these young people to behave the way they do.  

It will be for the most persistent and serious young offenders. And again, the key will be the length of the program. You can't unlearn bad habits that have taken years to become entrenched in just a matter of weeks. You and I know that. You know when you're trying to turn around our own bad habits, it's hard. So, imagine these young people who have only ever known the life they have known that has led them down this path being asked to completely transform their lives in a matter of weeks.  

The other key is the support for the young people when they emerge from what is basically a cocoon. They're insulated from reality, therein their own world. They don't have to make any decisions for themselves that's taken care of. For the first time in their lives, perhaps they'll be expected to be somewhere. They'll be given food regularly. They would have to forage to survive. So, you come out of that and back into real life and that's where in the past, the programs have tripped themselves up.  

Blue Light, which used to run discos in my day, is a registered charity that works in partnership with the police to deliver a range of youth programs and is the type of organisation that will be providing wrap around care once young offenders try to reintegrate back into the community, as Blue Light’s Chief operating Officer Brendan Crompton explained on the Mike Hosking breakfast this morning. 

"In the New Zealand context, you’ve got two choices. When kids offend, they can either do a community-based sentence, which is what Blue Light runs, or kids can go to youth jail. So those already exist. What they’re looking at is the most persistent youth offenders, and they’re not a big group. But there are a group of persistent youth offenders who will become persistent adult offenders, who need more intensive time and support. Away from, essentially, either negative parental involvement, because the parents’ involved in gangs or crime themselves, or more commonly, what I call parental non-involvement. The parents don’t know where their 10, 11, 12-year-olds are at three o’clock in the morning.  

“So they’re saying, how can we? How can we have a residential programme that’s more intensive? And then obviously the part that is where we’d be involved is when the kids are released from that period inside. What’s the wraparound support to make sure they aren’t back off and offending again?” 

It is hard. One of my most memorable callers was a man called Joe who left Hawkes Bay after coming out of prison. He’d been involved in gangs there. He had to leave and come to Auckland to get away from the gang influence, the gang lifestyle. He didn't want to go to prison again. He was done. But it is so, so hard trying to start a new life. He did incredibly well. He got a job; an employer and was very honest about his past. His employer was willing to give him a chance, but try and find rent, try and find a place to rent and pay the rent on your own in Auckland. He ended up living in his car while still working. His boss let him use the showers and the bathrooms in the morning to get ready for work. We lost touch, we lost contact. I hope he's well. I hope he managed to keep going in the new direction, he was trying to forge for himself. But boy, it's tough. And that's with a grown man who's made that decision. Imagine the young ones coming out.   

The wraparound support is going to be absolutely critical because boot camps, as you well know, have been tried before and they have failed. Only two of the 17 youth offenders sent to the camps across the first two years of the scheme in the late 2000s had not reoffended by 2011. In 2017, sociologist and crime expert Jared Gilbert said the effect of boot camps was quite minimal and would basically just make young crooks a bit stronger and a bit fitter.  

During the election campaign, Christopher Luxon and Mark Mitchell, the Police Spokesperson then, Police Minister now, were really strong on youth crime as well they might have been given the amount of ram raids that were taking place across the country. They said the boot camp policy is going to act as a circuit breaker for young offenders, taking them off the streets and after 12 months, sending them back into the world work ready.  

Well, I'm not entirely sure that we can expect them to be work ready. Just not ram-raiding Michael Hill would be a start. Not beating up each other would be a start. But proponents for the camp say the difference this time is the rehabilitative aspect, the counselling aspect. The recognition that these kids aren't necessarily bad. A lot of them are sad. So, working together on keeping them off the streets so they don't continue to victimize. Working on them so that they understand where the behaviours come from, trying to. Try to heal whatever mental trauma they have endured in the past. It's the length of time of the camp and the wrap around support back in the real world, which will be absolutely vital.  

So I'd love to get your thoughts on this one. There is a youth development program in the military that if you heard the interview with Brendan Crompton this morning, you have heard him talk about that. A youth development program in the military, which is phenomenally successful, he said. It's world renowned, but that's when you've got young people who are choosing to be there. It's military by consent, if you will. So, in this case you've got young people and probably it is the last thing they want.  

So, will it work this time? I hope so because there are significant differences. It is a small group of kids who will go on to offend as adults and they will end up having miserable lives for the most part. And making other people's lives misery.  

So, it's worth a try, isn't it? 

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Well, whoofty! Where do we start with transport after the huge policy drop yesterday? Fifteen roads of national significance have been given the go ahead, no ifs, no buts. Despite the eye-watering expense, the Prime Minister says they are essential to building a productive economy. How are we going to pay for it? Good question. Because basically it's just picking a number and multiplying it by the time the roads are finished. A number of different options have been proposed and some are more concrete than others, Transport Minister Simeon Brown outlined some of them with Mike Hosking this morning. 

“We're not increasing fuel taxes until 2027 and by that stage there will not have been an increase in fuel excise for six years. So, the reality is funding is needed to pay for the infrastructure that New Zealanders need to be able to get around quickly and safely. And so we're not increasing fuel taxes till 2027. The New Zealand Transport Agency, their role is to develop what's called the national and transport program that will outline when these roads will be built, how they'll be funded in terms of specifics for each particular project, but with our expectations very clear, they need to be looking at a range of funding and financing tools, whether it’s PPP’s, value capture,  build-own-operate transfers, and my expectation is they’ll be getting all that straightaway.“ 

Yes, so many different ways of doing it because there's a lot to pay for.  

Along with the building of the 15 roads of national significance, we've also got a half billion-dollar pothole prevention fund (that will be popular) and the establishment of a Road Efficiency Group, the scrapping of Road to Zero, replacing it with targets for drink and drug testing, $4.4 billion in public transport spending.  

So, Simeon Brown mentioned a few of the ways that the transport budget will be funded. We've got the fuel tax hikes in 2027. The rego’s going up, that's not a big deal in terms of extra expense, an extra $25 and then another $25. We've got an increase in fines being looked at as well, some fines could double if you're not wearing your safety belt, (hopefully we'll see that for the use of cell phones while driving as well). We've got the value capture taxes.  

If you're living in an area where public transport suddenly opens up land, then you will have to pay more for it because you're land in theory becomes more desirable. We've got reducing costs by fast tracking the roads through the consent process. We've got congestion charges. You know Uncle Tom Cobbley and all really when we look at it.  

We've got so much that we can, and perhaps should be doing.  

Now of course, the cycling coalition have said it's not fair and this is ridiculous and other countries around the world are creating more cycleways. We do need cycleways as part of a cohesive transport plan. But cycles aren't going to carry the bulk of goods that we need to get to our ports for export and distribute around the country as imports. So, we need roads. The cycle lobby has to accept, surely in their heart of hearts, late at night as they're lying there in bed, planning their wet weather gear as they cycle into work the next day, they have to know that for their cycles to get here, they have to be brought in from another country and then distributed around the country. You can't put 100 cycles on top of a cyclist. You need a truck to do it. So, we need the roads.  

I did think Simeon Brown didn't quite understand public transport when he said, well, public transport users have to pay their way too. At the moment we're trying to get people into public transport where they can ease up the congestion on the roads that we have now. The roads will take some time to build and as generally happens, when you build more roads, more cars fill it, so we need a public transport option as well.  

What's fair?  

What's not?  

I think congestion charges make sense. Value added I’m in two minds on. I know a couple of our younger colleagues at work who bought their first homes because there was good public transport access. A developer built a series of little townhouses in one of the outer suburbs of Auckland, and a couple of younger colleagues bought them, their first home with Kiwi Saver and they chose specifically because there was good public transport links into the city. So, it was attractive to them to have public transport. Is it fair enough, then, that those who sell the land that is going to be used for the housing, have to pay a bit extra? Tolls. Nobody minds paying tolls surely, do they? Because whenever you put in a toll road, there must be an alternative. Cutting the red tape for consenting, I think everybody would agree to that, wouldn't they?  

So, the roads have to be paid for, there is no Covid Fund to dip into. Without a productive economy, we can't afford anything.  

So, what comes first in your mind? Have the Government got their priorities right? 

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Infrastructure NZ's welcoming the renewal of National's Roads of National Significance programme. 

The Government's draft transport plan features a half-a-billion dollar pothole prevention fund and 15 new major roads.  

It'll be funded in part by a $25 dollar increase to vehicle registration fees in each of the next two years. 

CEO Nick Leggett told Kerre Woodham that the previous Government initiated just one new road in six years, so we were left with nothing in the pipeline.  

He says we need these roads; they've connected people for millennia and will continue to. 

Leggett says even as we de-carbonise, we are still going to need them, and they need to be of a higher quality. 

LISTEN ABOVE 

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Associate Education Minister David Seymour says free school lunches can’t continue at such a cost – arguing there’s no evidence it works.  

The previous Government committed more than $300 million to fund the school lunch programme to the end of this year. The programme will be reviewed by Seymour, looking for ways to make it more efficient.  

Charity KidsCan supports schools and early childhood centres across New Zealand with breakfasts and lunches. 

CEO & Founder Julie Chapman tells Kerre Woodham that school food is one of the main sources of nutrition for many children.  

Chapman agrees there needs to be more rigour across the level of waste or surplus food, and explains the use of a portal used by KidsCan that calculates quantities based on demand. 

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We thought we'd start this morning with the review into the efficacy, or lack thereof, of school lunches. Associate Education Minister David Seymour says free school lunches, as they stand, are a prime example of wasteful public spending. They'd like to do away with them altogether, but he told Mike Hosking this morning that his party is just one within the coalition government. Tthere are other parties who want to have some way of addressing kids turning up at school hungry, so as he told Mike Hosking this morning, David Seymour says they'll just have to find a more efficient way of delivering the meals to the children who need them.  

It would be more efficient if it fed more people. It would be more efficient if it didn't waste as much as 25% - which is the evidence that's come up in the past doesn't actually get eaten by. Kids. Or it could be more efficient if it was targeted at people with greater need. For example, you'd be people saying, well, it's got to be universal. I heard your guy on earlier saying the most efficient way is to give it to everyone. Well, it's illogical. It can't be more efficient if you're giving it to people that need it and don't need it at the same level. So, we're going through the process of taking papers to cabinet and getting cabinet to agree on it. One thing I can say is we will not be spending $350 million because we just can't afford it right now. We will do it in a way that will be more effective and efficient and is a good use of taxpayers money.   

And there are efficient ways to deliver food to hungry kids. The government isn't the only organisation doing it. Others have been doing it for years and years and years, and you would have to argue you have been doing it effectively. Kick Start Breakfast collaboration between Anchor Milk and Sanitarium Weet-Bix - they have been delivering breakfast to kids who need or want it. You might come from a family that can afford to stock the pantry, but you forget, or you've been to swimming and you're racing to get to school, there's a breakfast there available if you want it. It's not, as Boyd Swinburn says, you have to put up your hand and say hi, I'm a poor kid whose parents either can't or won't feed me. It's there if you need it or want it. I think they have provided 180,000 breakfasts every school week. So at least that's milk and Weet-Bix in your tummy. I know some vegan lovies might like to have the spirulina shots and the spinach is the way to start the day, but you know something in your tummy, milk and Weet-bix is perfectly good for generations of children and perfectly good for somebody who's starving. You've got KidsCan - they provide free food, clothing and health products for children in years 1 to 13. They deliver offerings that can last on the shelf for months at a time, once a term.  They deliver things like pasta, muesli bars, baked beans, and if you're hungry that's available. If you've left your lunch at home that's available. And nobody is criticising either KidsCan or Kick Start Breakfast for not making these offerings universal. Well to a certain extent they are universal in that everybody can have them if they want them. What they're not doing, is forcing every single child to sit down and devour what they put in front of them. The food and other items that are being delivered by charitable organisations are there for those who need it and there's no shame in accessing it. And there are ways that kids could access food paid for by the taxpayer without publicly shaming them. Boyd Swinburn, I think, was being provocative when he said, children shouldn't have to put up their hand and say I'm poor. That's ridiculous. There are other ways of doing it. Also, Seymour's right about wanting to see value for money because the previous government hadn't put school lunches in its long-term budget costings. They've dipped into the Covid-19 emergency money, which was all debt. The Covid response and recovery fund, that's where the funding came for school lunches. There was no long-term funding applied. As the excellent Kate McNamara writes, she wrote about it in the Herald some time ago. Grant Robertson was told by Treasury that the more than $527 million in operating funds he planned to charge to the Covid-19 emergency fund for the lunches, didn't really qualify as Covid resurgence costs. Funding through the ordinary budget process would be more suitable. That advice fell on deaf ears because he knew he couldn't find a place in his budget for it. So now it's been kicked down the road and National either has to become the New Zealand equivalent of Thatcher - Thatcher milk snatcher and take the lunches away - or find the money to pay for it that Labour didn't have. They just used the Covid fund, National doesn't have that to pay for those lunches.   

Also, I was one who supported it because I thought it would get more kids into school. It's a safe place to be. If you come from a precarious home, school is a safe place to be and you'll be fed. But again, there's no real evidence that that is why children are coming to school. So, 12.5% of children, according to the New Zealand Health Survey, live in households where food runs out sometimes or often. That's fewer than 100,000 of our 815,000 school kids. Probably considerably fewer, Kate points out, since the health survey includes preschoolers. So, you could feed lunch to every single one of those kids who are deprived twice over for the money that we're currently spraying in an untargeted way to kids who don't want it or need it. So the kids, according to a Ministry of Education evaluation in 2021, said the children ate more vegetables and fewer processed foods at lunch and they felt modestly more full after lunch when compared to kids not in the programme. They didn't ask about attendance. That was one of the reasons I supported. It didn't bother asking about that. A more recent evaluation, October 22, looked at secondary school students and found that the programme had no statistically meaningful effect on attendance. Neither evaluation made any attempt to measure the program against academic achievement, school enrolment or completions. So, I'd like to see a bit of that before I commit half a billion dollars to more funding. I want to feed kids who through no fault of their own, are missing out on food. I want them to see school as a safe place to be, a place where somebody does care about them and does want them to succeed in life. Where they can see other people succeeding, where they can see that people care about them. But this hasn't worked. Just doing it in an unregulated, hoots wahey, let's feed them all, let's not have stigma, doesn't work. Other organisations can feed children relatively cost effectively, and they can get to the children who need the food. There's no stigma around them. Farm it out. Farm out a third of the money to those organisations and they will deliver a better result. And let's just see if we do see an improvement in school attendance. If it does actually work, if it doesn't, then let's put the money into another program that gets better results. 

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This annoys me because I shouldn't have to be talking about it, and because in the scheme of things, given what the country is facing, there are far, far bigger fish to fry.  

However, it speaks to an attitude, and it speaks to leading by example, and it speaks to having an understanding of what people, ordinary people, people who might be losing their jobs, people who might be losing their homes, people who are struggling to keep hold of their business, it speaks to what they are going through.  

In a time of redundancies, at a time of belt-tightening, at a time where people are really struggling, people who never thought they would be in the position of struggling, why is the Prime Minister claiming a $52,000 accommodation allowance to live in his very own apartment?  

You'll recall he campaigned, and we enthusiastically cheered on his calls for a reduction in public expenditure. The public servants across Wellington are waiting for the axe to fall in numerous government departments, almost every government department, as their managers have been asked to make savings of 6.5% after the wanton overspends of the previous administration. That is quite true.  

Yet he's not leading by example.  

I know that $52,000, when you compare it to the sort of wastage that was going on when Grant Robertson thought $600 million found down the back of the couch was just chump change, you know $52,000 is neither here nor there in terms of government expenditure.  

And I know he's perfectly entitled to claim the allowance, he’s not fiddling anything. MP's outside of Wellington are able to claim just over $30,000 a year to cover their housing expenses. Prime Ministers, a bit more. And if you're required to be in Wellington for your job but you don't actually live there, a decent employer will give you an accommodation allowance, that is quite normal.  

But in the PM's case, he already has a house he can use that's supplied by the taxpayer, Premier House. He doesn't want to live there. It's fair to say Premier House needs a bit of a glow up. Like all old girls, perhaps it could do with zhoosh. But the two previous PM’s, Hipkins and Ardern, say well yes, there are a few leaks and certainly it could do with an upgrade, but it's perfectly liveable. Adern and her family lived there during her tenure, Hipkins didn't but that's because under the rules, he couldn't. Wellington based MPs can't live at Premier House. It's precisely for Prime Ministers who live outside of Wellington. Christopher Luxon is one of those.  

So, he has a house that's available to him courtesy of the taxpayer. Needs a bit of a do-up. Plenty of houses that people are living in need a bit of a zhoosh, can't afford it at the moment so you don't do it.  

He has an apartment amongst the homes he owns and there's no crime in that. But you know, he owns a few homes. One of them is an apartment in Wellington. He owns that, it's his free and freehold. Does he really need to claim the $52,000?  

I think the optics look bad.  

It will be the first time in 34 years, according to Newsroom, that a PM will claim the payment. You would think, given his salary, he'd be able to afford to pay whatever living expenses he has.  

At a time when all New Zealanders are really feeling the pain, forgoing a $52,000 taxpayer funded allowance when you can have a house you can live in, but you choose not to would be a really sensible idea.  

I know it's not much. But again, it's about leading by example, about showing that when you're calling for austerity, when you're calling for every single taxpayer dollar to be scrutinized, when you have a house that's available but it's not the flashiest and you might not want to live there, surely that is your choice.  

I don't know, I expected more, quite frankly.   

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Now, what on Earth is going on within immigration New Zealand? Ever since the days of the late, unlamented Iain Lees-Galloway, the department has been struggling.

A pause was placed on the processing of grandparents' visas, that was before Covid. Migrant workers are still being exploited by unscrupulous employers, despite a number of reviews under former Immigration Ministers.

Last year it was revealed that there were nearly 200 employers who had had their licenses to hire migrants revoked because they were not delivering on what the law requires and on what was promised. Immigration New Zealand are investigating 167 more businesses.

Immigration Minister Erica Stanford accepts that there were a number of pressures on Immigration New Zealand staff. The reopening of borders after Covid-19,  unprecedented demand for workers, and new staff in the department did result in visas and applications being processed one per week instead of one per day, which really slows things up.

But then if you're asking staff who are new to the department for extra checks and to be super scrupulous, there's going to be a lag. There was also the merging of six visas into one, and a new IT system that's not fully operational. We knew about that, still not fully operational. 

At the same time, we have unprecedented numbers of people flocking to New Zealand. But are they the people we need to make New Zealand a better, stronger, more resilient society and economy and in turn, are they getting what they're being promised? 

It's a huge commitment to leave your family, to leave your home country, to take your own family, to pick up everything you own and come to a brand new country, a brand new culture. And the expectation is that your skills will be recognised and you'll have a place here, that you will belong here. 

Are we in turn giving migrant workers what they're expecting? Look at the nurses. We have nurses coming here spending tens of thousands of dollars to do so, just on their applications. That's before you even take into account airfares, rent and the like. And yet they're being told that their skill sets are not what hospitals are looking for.

Canterbury Hospital in its ‘situations vacant’, they had a need for nurses in maternity, oncology, acute general surgery, that sort of thing. But in their ‘sits vac’ they said applications from nurses who had recently completed their competency assessment programs would not be accepted.

So basically saying, if you're new to New Zealand, you've just done your competency as assessment, don't bother applying. There has been a huge influx of internationally qualified nurses coming to New Zealand since our borders opened. 

Of the newly registered nurses in the October to December quarter, 63% were trained overseas. To be fair to Andrew Little, the former health minister, he did say there were a lot of nurses wanting to come to New Zealand, and finally they're here.

Despite being trained, despite completing their competency, the rejections just keep coming for them. At Gore Hospital 80, international nurses applied for a job, none of them had the necessary qualifications or experience.

So where do we need to fix things? 

I'm not going to say where does the blame lie, where do we need to fix things? Do the health authorities need to be clearer with immigration? 

That the sort of nurses they’re after are experienced nurses that won't require wrap-around care for the first couple of years to get them up to the speed of the positions that are available. Do the recruiters need to be much clearer?

What if you're a brand shiny new nurse, keen and eager and desperate to start your career in a new country, your language is fine, you've done the cultural competency, but you just don't have the experience and that you understand that? 

You can understand Gore Hospital if you've got a sole charge nurse, it's not fair on the hospital, the patients or the nurse herself or himself to put a nurse in charge of the entire hospital. So where do we need to make changes so nurses aren't disappointed and hospitals are getting the staff they need? 

How functional is Immigration New Zealand at the moment? If it's taking a week to do a job that it used to take a day to do, so we need more staff in there? Do we need to put a cap on the number of applications that can be taken in any given month? 

You've got international tourists wanting to come here waiting for visitors visas, a huge backlog of those. 36,000 last year were waiting for visitor visas to come here. When it comes to trying to get family over, if you've tried to do that yourself, you know the absolute administrative nightmare it is trying to get that to happen.  And then the hurry up and wait.

The new technology was supposed to speed things up, and that's not fully operational yet. Are you confident that once the IT is doing what it should the job will be made easier for those within the department, and life will be easier for those who have to use it? 

You know it's  great that people want to come here. Our forebears all wanted to come here. We all came from somewhere to come to New Zealand. And there's undoubtedly a shortage, across the board in so many, many areas, but are we falling back into the bad old habits of just taking all comers who are undercutting New Zealand workers because they can, because they're willing to live 16 to a three bedroom house?

Are we offering false hope to qualified people like the nurse, like teachers saying, you're very welcome and then ultimately pulling the welcome mat out from under them?

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Where to start from this morning's program?!  

The Mike Hosking Breakfast was the gift that kept on giving, what with Stuart Nash effectively cutting any ties that remained with an existing Labour Party you would have to say, to say ‘I was all for getting tough on the gangs, but nobody would support me.’ 

And then we had Jan Tinetti responding to National’s press conference yesterday saying so many projects have been promised, and yet we've looked, and they simply can't be delivered. There's not a snowballs chance in hell, we can afford them because the cost overruns are so extreme.  

And then further to the Ministry of Education and further around the education portfolio, there's a story from BusinessDesk this morning showing that the Ministry of Education's consulting bills surged by 450% since 2019. 450% in five years (really four years). They went to the top-tier consultancy firms, ones like Beca that picked up $15 million over 5 years, PwC, $13 million, KPMG $7.7 million.  

The surge in spending came after the Labour government directed the Ministry of Education to get cracking on a new school property capital program. Things like new classrooms, upgrading school buildings, school facilities, that sort of thing. But yesterday the coalition government announced that some of these projects are in doubt after Erica Stanford, the current Minister of Education, said that promises had been made to schools that simply could not be delivered. Work is paused on 20 projects, up to 350 projects in various stages ranging from design, basically just drawings on a board through to pre-construction could now be scrapped.  

The current government is blaming the former government. Erica Stanford says it's not unusual to have isolated examples of projects that experience delivery challenges, and there have been cost overruns —that's fine— but this is of an unprecedented scale. She says Labour have left a system of systemic and embedded challenges that cannot continue. She says there is evidence that Chris Hipkins, as previous Minister of Education, knew there was too little funding for what had been promised but let schools continue, basically designing their dream projects without telling them that there simply wasn't the money for it. They had to operate within a budget. Labour's education spokesperson and former education Minister Jan Tinetti says no, the money is there. 

“But we're not up to our ears in debt and I'm very proud of our fiscal record and I will push back on that. What I am saying is that National are manufacturing, a crisis here that doesn't exist.” 

So, are they?  

I think we agreed that there has been underfunding on school buildings and under the Key government. Labour said, right, we'll make this good. We'll build all the new classrooms that anyone could ever possibly hope for in new schools, and we'll do it right now. We'll give them all of the everything.  

But the money has to be there, doesn't it? Chris Hipkins says well yes, National’s giving tax cuts to the rich instead of putting that money into schools and school buildings, instead of delivering on the promises made by Labour, National says we simply cannot deliver on those. The cost overruns are extraordinary.  

So what, then, are we paying the consultants for? If you're spending $15 million with one consultancy company, wouldn't you want them to come up with accurate costings? So, you had an idea of where you were going? And what could be done with that money? I mean, I guess when it comes to building projects. You would understand, perhaps the Ministry of Education outsourcing, but a University of Auckland Professor Nicolas Lewis has researched government spending on consultants. And not only is the ministry looking for consultants when it comes to building projects, which I could give them a pass on, although you would have to wonder at the scale of the spending. But they also rely extensively on consultants for policy development. Effectively, there is no in-house capability. They tend to contract out for all the major curriculum development services.

According to Professor Lewis, about ten small education consultancy firms relied largely, if not entirely, on ministry contracts for their income.  

So they're consulting up for buildings, they're consulting out for what you would imagine a ministry exists for, which is creating and developing a curriculum for schools. And the other thing that really grinds my gears is when you look at that, so they're contracting out for curriculum, which is what you'd imagine the ministry would do, so there'd be fewer staff at the Ministry of Education wouldn't there? Because if they're not doing what you would imagine they exist to do, there wouldn't be many staff. The number of teachers employed by state schools rose by just over 5 per cent from 2017 to 2022. By the same period, the number of full-time staff employed at the Ministry of Education ballooned by 55 per cent.  

So not only are they contracting out everything, they're employing more staff. Like loads more stuff. 1700 more staff than was employed in 2016. What are they doing? Coming up with new ways to spend money, new inventive ways to spend money. How on earth can you justify farming out your curriculum? While taking on 55% more staff?   

So when you get a he said/she said, as we have with the previous government and this government, with Christopher Luxon and Erica Stanford saying they were out of control with the spending, it was complete and utter cavalier disregard for budgets and for costings and for writing up contracts that meant people had to deliver on the price that was offered.  

So they say that Labour was irresponsible with money. Jan Tinetti says no, we're not. No, I stand by our fiscal record. And then you see just one ministry has a consulting bill that is surged by 450%. And you have a ministry that farms out the very work it exists to do while at the same time taking on more than 50% more staff, who do you believe? 

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As promised, the coalition government has announced legislation designed to make life just a little bit tougher for gangs.

They are not the first government to try and control the range and the breadth and the strength of the various gangs in this country, they are unlikely to be the last.

As far back as 1972, Labour leader Norm Kirk promised in the run up to the election that he would take the bikes off the bikies. Very un-Labour, but that's what he promised at the time -a promise which actually proved legally impossible to implement.

The courts have stood in the way of many a government's good intentions. So he promised to take the bikes off the bikies, unable to do so, his government introduced legislation in 1973, that was aimed at the gangs trying to prohibit unlawful assembly.

Further legislation in 1976 enabled the confiscation of vehicles used to commit offences. But along with the stick came the carrot, and that's what I'm hoping to see as well.

That is something that Christopher Luxon said they would do,  that they would make it tough for gangs, but they would do everything they could to help gang members who wanted to leave, leave, and work with community groups to try and prevent gangs from recruiting young people.

In the 70s, government schemes tried to hinder gang recruitment by helping underachieving students get into jobs when they left school. They also provided fun and games in the form of recreational and sporting activities outside of school, sort of blue light light discos but for the big kids to try and see that there was an alternative way of life.

In the mid 70s, work cooperatives for adult gang members were set up. Now you'll probably remember these, but if you're of a certain age because that's when Muldoon came in and in the mid 80s, millions of dollars was given to gang collectives for work related activities. Millions. Most funds, to be fair, went to genuine projects in some cases, in a shocking revelation, they supported extravagant clubhouse renovations and opulent lifestyles. If only we'd had social media back in the day, nothing would have changed.

The abuse of the schemes resulted in their cancellation in 1987.

Interventionist approaches have always been tried along  with the 70s and 2006. Youth workers put on services for high risk young people and families, parenting information support programs aimed at reconnecting youths with their culture that spread throughout the country.

Then along came Michael laws and in 2009 at Wanganui District Council passed a bylaw banning gang patches in the city. Other cities said right, we're on to that too. But in 2011, a High Court judge found the bylaw to be unlawful on human rights grounds.

None the less gang regalia was banned from places like schools, swimming pools and government buildings in 2013. So it can be done, but there needs to be a willingness, I guess, to do it.

So since the 70s, we can see we've tried to a) prevent at-risk kids from joining gangs, b) tried to offer alternative pathways for gang members to leave if they wish and c) we've tried to make it tough for gang members to do their business, nothing unusual here.

So the last Labour administration adopted the Rob Muldoon approach to it -  to work with gangs, give them a seat at the table, treat them with respect ,treat them as equals. Did that work? Did they respond with respect and a desire to work with the community? Not really, no. All it did was give the gangs their cojones to do exactly as they wished.

It used to grind my gears (a lot used to grind my gears during lockdown so maybe I was overreacting), but it used to grind my gears when you'd see funerals and tangi rules under lockdown with everyone else but not gang members. No, no. They would have convoys and leaning out of their cars and gathering in far more than 50 people. Televised, didn't give a fat rat's arse.

Borders - they were for other people. Any criticism of gang activity was greeted with accusations of racism and claims that they had every right to have their views and wishes heard, which they thought they did because they were being treated by the previous administration as though they had a right to exist and conduct their business as they wished.

Unfortunately, a lot of their business is illegal. I would have no problem with gangs and patches whatsoever if they were engaged in legitimate business. Many associates of gang members are, but ultimately the business of gangs is to muscle each other for turf and then sell drugs. That's where you get your big bucks. You don't get it by selling organically grown apples and kumara by the roadside. You know that's where you get your big bucks.

Law abiding citizens were starting to get a little bit sick of the posturing and jockeying for position conducted by various gangs and full view of the public so National promised to crack down. And it’s started. Six gold plated Harleys, once owned by the Comancheros were crushed on the weekend. And new legislation will be introduced, going one further than the Wanganui District Council, banning gang patches in public and giving police extra powers to stop gang members congregating.

Again, this is posturing, this time on the part of the government. Will it immediately stop into gang warfare? No. Will it end the production and sale of meth? No.

But what it's saying is sending a very strong message that we are sick of seeing you wearing your advertising for your brand on your back. We're sick of you behaving exactly as you wish, stating your intentions loud and clear with your patches on your back saying this is who we are, this is what we do, tremble in fear.

If you want to wear your little blazers and your jackets in your little club rooms, you fill your steel cap boots. Yeah, that's what club rooms are for.

Dressing up and talking nonsense and  bigging yourself up. You do that. It's what lots of people do in club rooms. But I don't want to see, right up in my grills, your pride and your lawlessness.

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