Full Show Podcast: 29 March 2026

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks ed B.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
It's Sunday. You know what that means.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
It's the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin and Wiggles for
the best selection of great reeds Us Talks ed B.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Good morning and welcome to the Sunday Session. I'm Francesco
BRIDCN with you until midday. Coming up on the show today,
British actor Robert Aramaiyo joins us. If you've watched Game
of Thrones or The Lord of the Rings TV series,
you'll recognize Robert, but his latest role has just elevated
him to a whole new level of stardom. Robert plays
John Davidson in the film I Swear That John is

(00:51):
a real life character who has threat syndrome and has
dedicated his life to educating people about Tourette sin supporting
people with it. It is a remarkable performance and he
won Best Actor at the Best Is a month ago,
beating out some pretty stiff competition. Robert Aramayo and the
I Swear director Kirk Jones joins me after ten this morning.
After eleven, I'm joined by one of our most respected

(01:12):
and awarded to screenwriters, Fiona Samuel. Fiona is also an actor, director,
and producer. She's worked across TV, film and theater. She's
written shows for TV like Outrageous Fortune, Your Mighty Johnson's
and Nothing Trivial and written features such as Consent to
the Nicholas, That Luise Nicholas Story and Pike River, to
name a few. Next week, her latest play launches with

(01:34):
Auckland Theater Company. It's called Helen Clark in six Outfits.
Sounds interesting, doesn't know it. Fiona Samuel is with us
after eleven and of course is always You're most welcome
to text throughout the morning. Ninety two ninety two.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
This Sunday session.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
The reason why Labor leader Chris Hipkins has an uphill
battle leading into this year's election, regardless of what the
polls say, has been on show this week, and I'm
not talking about the awkward personal posts. I'm talking about
his politicking. About a month ago, Chris Hopkins delivered his
State of The's speech in Auckland. Some described it as boring,
others saw it as an effort to come across as

(02:11):
mature and disciplined to convey a reassuring voice to kiwis
that Labour would act calmly and firmly to deal with
cost of living and affordability issues. But credible Hipkins was
replaced with snippy Hipkins this week. When he was asked
how Labour would deal with the fuel crisis if it
was in power, his response was to say the government
needs to come up with a plan. He went on

(02:31):
to add the other one sitting in the hot steak. Now,
no one expects a politician to come up with a
solution on the fly. But in an election year, voters
are looking for more than performative politics. We want to
understand how the opposition would handle a crisis. We want
to be reassured they would respond with ideas and constructive competence.

(02:52):
In his State of the Nation's speech, Hipkins said he
would put affordability at the heart of all decisions. But
the impression he gave this week is that he can't
be bothered putting some thought into how he would deal
with the biggest affordability problem currently impacting New Zealand homes
and businesses. It was an opportunity to impress and he
gave it a miss. The Hipkins quip irked for another reason.

(03:14):
We shouldn't be paying opposition MPs just to perform occasionally
in the House and in front of the media. We're
paying them to understand their area of responsibility and show
leadership when you're the leader of a party. We're paying
them to have the expertise to challenge the government and
advocate effectively for the better outcome for kiwis. And right
now many of these kiwis are worried about the price

(03:35):
of fuel. The other news that made it a difficult
week for Hipkins was the revelation he knew something he
claimed he didn't. In its efforts to put COVID to
bed once in for all, the Labor Party is relying
on the Royal Commissions largely, the Royal Commission largely accepting
that the response was appropriate and well managed to COVID,
and on Hipkins, the former Minister of Health, taking a

(03:58):
humble line and acknowledging that they didn't get in acknowledging
that they didn't get everything right. But there was a
hiccup this week with the discovery of a paper trail
applying Hipkins knew more than he was letting on about
risks associated with the second COVID vaccine dose for teenagers.
Did Hipkins just forget or did he get his timeline
mixed up? Who knows, But it's not a good look
and it makes the negative legacy of Hipkins's role as

(04:20):
Health Minister and Prime Minister during the COVID years harder
to move on from. The success of Hipkins staying on
as the leader of the Labor Party depends on being
able to shed the past and grab the future. Neither
has gone well this week. The bigger problem for the
party is there's no one to replace.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Him for the Sunday session.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
So can to hear your thoughts on that ninety two
ninety two? Was it a bit of a missed opportunity
there for the opposition leader? In comparison, though, have you
noticed that National Party's Deputy leader Nikola Willis is having
a pretty good fuel crisis so far? But that's another conversation.
We might bring that up with Barry Sober, who's going
to join us in politics. Shortly, it is eleven past nine.

(05:05):
You're with newstorgs FB.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
Sunday with Style the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin and
Winkles for the best selection of great reeds.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
He's talks heavy.

Speaker 3 (05:16):
Thank you for your text, Francesca. I don't think Hipkin's
not having an answer regarding the petrol as his only problem.
The COVID email is an absolute disgrace and suggests he
can't be trusted at all.

Speaker 4 (05:25):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
Ninety two. Ninety two is the number if you'd like
to flick a text through right cause. The kiwis to
Buy New Zealand Maid as precious mount on a manufacturing
sector and local producers. This follows the announcement of closures
of both McCain and what Is processing sites this week.
Buy New Zealand Maid executive director Dane Ambler is calling
for policy that prioritizes New Zealand supplies and he joins me, now,

(05:47):
good morning.

Speaker 5 (05:47):
Dane, morning, Thanks for having me.

Speaker 3 (05:50):
Hey, are these closures part of a bigger problem?

Speaker 5 (05:54):
Yes, well, I think you know we need to nip
it in the bud now. It's really a stark reminder
that you know, these local operators are operating in an
increasingly difficult trading environment with rising coughs, demand has collapsed,
and you know there's growing international competition. So now is
really the time to back local and step in and
get as much support as we can.

Speaker 3 (06:15):
What are you seeing and hearing from local companies?

Speaker 6 (06:19):
Yeah, it's a real mixed bag.

Speaker 5 (06:21):
So a huge number of them are doing extremely well
at the moment. But we just put out a surveyed
to market of our one five hundred small businesses and
forty six percent, so almost half are seeing rising costs
and more than a third say demand is really impacting
their performance. So you know, all of these things, and

(06:41):
you know, the fallout from COVID is really creating a
perfect storm for local manufacturers and I think they're operating
on really tight margins at the moment.

Speaker 3 (06:50):
So how important is it to support our local producers.

Speaker 5 (06:55):
Yeah, it's it's essential, And you know that's why we're
calling for more deliberate backing of New Zealan made goods
and services. And you know that really includes government procurement
policies that prioritize local suppliers. This is crucial. You know,
the government department supports local That goes a really good
way to showing the community the right way to go
about things. And you know, I would like to see

(07:17):
more targeted support for these businesses to lower cost pressures
and a clear strategy to strengthen domestic production. So our
partners over in Australia, Australian May just got a twenty
million dollar handout from their government, So that just gives
you an idea of how much support they get over there.

Speaker 3 (07:34):
What was that handout for?

Speaker 5 (07:37):
I was basically to boost the brand and to encourage
Australian consumers to support local brands.

Speaker 3 (07:42):
Gotcha because that was going to be My next question
is how do you promote and get people to buy
from local producers?

Speaker 6 (07:49):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (07:49):
I mean you've got to be aware that a lot
of consumers are under immense cost pressure, so you don't
want to encourage them to spend money you know that
they don't have. So my whole philosophy on it is
to support local where you can and where it's feasible
for you to do so, so you know that it
might mean changing out the popcorn brand to pop and
Good at the supermarket or making it, you know, a

(08:11):
micro decision like that that can support a local brand.
You know, always going out to a cafe and getting
a coffee locally is always a good option as well.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
What should you be looking for, Like, if you're purchasing
something you want to be checking out where the produce
was grown rather than where it was packaged, don't.

Speaker 6 (08:28):
You that's right.

Speaker 5 (08:29):
Yeah, So obviously the new zeale made logo, it's still around,
been around for about thirty five years now, and it's
on you know, thousands of products. So we just went
to the supermarket on Friday to see how many products
we could find in five minutes with the logo on them,
and there was probably fifty plus products in the supermarket.

Speaker 7 (08:48):
So it's everywhere.

Speaker 5 (08:49):
Once you see it, you can't unsee it.

Speaker 3 (08:53):
How much is the current economic climation You've sort of
just mentioned this determined shopping behaviors though we know that
the overseas option might be cheaper and you know, when
times are tough.

Speaker 5 (09:04):
Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. I think we know
that Kiwis do want to buy local, and we see
that coming through all of our surveys and all of
the data that we collect. But the reality is that
times are still tough and cost of living pressures mean,
you know, house holds are pulling back on their spending
and that is flying through to reduce demand for locally

(09:24):
made goods, which do tend to be a little bit
more expensive. But you know, as I say, we don't
have to break the bank to support local There are
very small alternatives that that won't cost you a huge
amount as well, don't.

Speaker 3 (09:38):
Can I just pop back to we were talking about
how you want the government to sort of step in
and what they could do to help, and you mention
their procurement policies. Do we know how much procurement is done?

Speaker 5 (09:51):
Can?

Speaker 3 (09:51):
I mean majority of it?

Speaker 8 (09:52):
Surely within the year the departments and things I don't
know off the top of my head, but we have
heard some real horror stories of late of government departments
going with overseas businesses and often these contracts only come
down to, you know, a few thousand dollars.

Speaker 5 (10:12):
We would really urge government departments to think about the
whole life cycle of that product that they're buying or
the service that they're buying, because often the cost of
replacement is far more than choosing a New Zealand made
business in the first place. So yeah, we have seen
some some some pretty concerning stories of you know, central

(10:32):
and local government going out and you know, taking a
contract with a Chinese company over a Kiwi company over
a few thousand dollars.

Speaker 3 (10:40):
Because it's not actually just about a products it it
will be about protecting a whole supply chain, and then
there's logistics involved in employment. It's bigger than just that
product itself, isn't it.

Speaker 5 (10:53):
Yeah, And that's why, you know, when we see businesses
like McCain and what is closing up, you know, manufacturing plants,
you've got to think about the flow through and the
impact that has basically on the who whole community, you know,
hundreds of families impacted, and yeah, a bit of a
life flight or backbone of that community closing. And once
they do close, it's very unlikely that they will reopen,

(11:16):
you know, So it is very concerning.

Speaker 3 (11:19):
You also concern that the pressures might only get worse
with what we're seeing with you know, the increase in
increase in fuel costs.

Speaker 5 (11:27):
Yes, yeah, well I haven't seen you know, we've heard
a lot of talk of a big recovery post COVID.
I haven't seen a whole lot of that yet. You know,
I'm still quite concerned that the number of liquidations are
still exceedingly high for small businesses at the moment. So, yeah,
it is concerning. That just adds another you know, aspect

(11:49):
into the mix. And what's basically been a perfect storm
for businesses of the past few years. But you know,
you can live in hope and hopefully, you know, these
small businesses will find a way out, and we know
that they're resilient. And I guess another point is when
you know, when we see some industries go for sure,
which we've seen over the last thirty or forty years
in New Zealand, there's always new types of businesses emerging,

(12:13):
you know, and New Zealand's really paving the way and
the software the software space. So yeah, things aren't all negative.

Speaker 3 (12:22):
Good to end on a positive note. Thanks so much, Dane,
appreciate your time. That was by New Zealand Made Executive
Director Dane.

Speaker 2 (12:28):
Ambler the Sunday session.

Speaker 3 (12:31):
Okay, so, could free public transport be a better option
or answer to our fueld crisis and the targeted payments
the government announced this week? Doctor Tim Welsch from Augland
University School of Architecture and Planning has been looking into
it and he joins me, now, good morning, Tim, good morning. Okay,
how does free public transport stack up do you think

(12:52):
against the targeted payments the government announced this week?

Speaker 9 (12:57):
Well, it would be depending on how long we run it,
but it could potentially be cheaper for the country. It
would probably if we if we met free for everyone
for an entire year, it would probably be about three
hundred million dollars in lost revenue versus the three hundred
and seventy three million for the fifty dollars payments. But

(13:17):
the real impact is kind of who does it benefit,
And the Debtor really shows that it would go beyond
kind of just the working lower income people that are
currently currently benefit from the payment, to students and beneficiaries
and single working adults and single out of work adults

(13:37):
and people on super so it'd just be a much
broader impact overall.

Speaker 3 (13:43):
The other benefit, of course, to encouraging people to get
on public transport is we're not tuning through so much fuel.

Speaker 9 (13:51):
Yeah, that's the really critical point. The fifty dollars payment
doesn't do anything to reduce the demand for fuel, and
if anything, it just kind of keeps it as satis
quo or could potentially increase that demand. But if we
get even just a fraction more people on public transport,
that demand for fuel dramatically slows down and we preserve

(14:13):
what stocks we do have now.

Speaker 3 (14:16):
And is it enough to warrant the cost of free
public transport.

Speaker 9 (14:22):
Well, it's hard to say for sure, but when we
reduced public transport by just fifty percent during COVID, we
saw a shift of three percent of car trips moving
onto public transport, and that's what the half price bears.
And that three percent reduction is a meaningful amount of
the significant reduction of fuel consumption. So it likely would

(14:46):
in the long term benefit us in terms of fuel stocks,
but also in terms of anyone who couldn't access public
transport in our cities. It still preserves that fuel for
rural areas and smaller towns that don't have good public
transport as well.

Speaker 3 (15:01):
And more people that get on public transport least cause
on the row and we're not sitting in lines of
traffic going nowhere. And that's also good for our fuel consumption,
isn't it.

Speaker 9 (15:15):
Yeah, I mean it's a big circle really, So the
more people we get on public transportation, the less congestion
we have. So if we can reduce just a little
bit of congestion, we can see benefits of up to
thirty five percent reduction and fuel consumption by those that
are still driving when they don't have to sit in traffic,
and it also means that the buses can move faster

(15:36):
and they're more useful than for people to get onto,
and so more people will get on them.

Speaker 3 (15:42):
And realistically, people aren't going to need to drive, aren't
they tradees and various people are still going to need
to be getting shooting off all around town and thinks
that might help benefit them as well.

Speaker 9 (15:51):
That's absolutely right. I mean the realistically not everybody can
use public transport, but there are still a lot of
people who drive every day that can use it and
would find it's probably faster and in many ways more convenient.
So if we could encourage those people to get on
with lower or free fares, then it's a win for everybody.

Speaker 3 (16:09):
Okay, is there a downside with making public transport free?
You mentioned that cost. Did you say that if it
was free for everyone? Did you say for a year
it would be three hundred million lost revenue?

Speaker 9 (16:21):
It'd be somewhere around that. Yeah, that's the current fair
revenue for the country.

Speaker 3 (16:24):
And at the moment with the with the targeted payments,
what was that costing.

Speaker 9 (16:32):
We're looking at about three hundred and seventy three million dollars,
so it's much more, all.

Speaker 3 (16:37):
Right, So the cost is another huge issue.

Speaker 9 (16:40):
No, And there's another economic benefit there it's not talked about,
and that is that when someone drives in Auckland, so
let's say ten kilometers during rush hour, it costs the
country as a whole about five dollars and fifty cents
for that trip with when we consider congestion and emissions
and policing. When we get that same person on a bus,
that costs a country about two dollars and eighty cents.

(17:02):
So we save almost fifty percent by just moving someone
from a car to a bus. So if we add
that savings in, there's a net benefit for moving everybody
over as many people as we can to public transport
from a car.

Speaker 3 (17:15):
And then we just need reliable, safe public transport term
trains and not trains in Auckland that's suddenly going to
shut down for the school holidays and various things like that.
That's that's.

Speaker 9 (17:28):
Yeah, we really need our public transport system to keep
running all the time and as efficiently and as rebus
as possible.

Speaker 3 (17:35):
Really nice to talk to you, Thank you so much.
That was doctor Tim Welch. There keen to hear your thoughts.
I know a lot of people have been I know
a lot of people have been not so happy with
the fifty dollars targeted payments if you're a beneficiary or something,
So maybe this idea does sound better to you. You
know what, at the end of the day, if I'm
just having to work and home again, and the public

(17:57):
transport is free, and it means that we're just stockpiling
a little bit more fuel for central services and the
people who really need it and business doesn't need it.
Happy to do that, she says, before she actually has
to do it. It'll be interesting to see if I
do don't want it, But I mean I would say
that I'd be happy to play my part. It is
twenty seven past nine. You're most welcome to text ninety

(18:19):
two ninety two.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
It's the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin on News Talks
at B.

Speaker 3 (18:28):
It is time to talk politics now, and I'm delighted
to be joined by z B senior political correspondent, very sober.
Good morning, Berry, Oh, good morning, good morning. I know
you've got to switch it out now exactly. I do
exactly the same thing when I switched to afternoons. It's
all right, Hey, Look, we've just been talking actually to
Dr Tim Welch about the government's answer to the fuel

(18:50):
crisis being this fifty dollars weekly payment to about one
hundred and forty three thousand working families. It's the commain
complained about it has been, it's not reaching a broad
enough sort of group of people. Dr Tim Welch was
just saying that, you know, really another sure, another tool
they could have used would be to make public transport
free for a period of time. Do you think that

(19:12):
that would have been a more interesting option.

Speaker 7 (19:15):
Well, look, it's auvery fine to say that, but you've
got to say who pays the bill in the end,
And certainly Labor found that during the COVID crisis, that
you know, when they increased the public debt by more
than sixty billion dollars, it's now costing this nine billion
dollars a year simply to pay the interest payment. So

(19:36):
it's not as though this government's got a lot of
cash to splash around. And the point that they've always
made is that all these moves are temporary, and you know,
you get I think it's four consecutive weeks of ninety
one octane petrol being under three dollars for a liter

(19:58):
then it'll go. So this is a way to target
people that are working, not on the beneficiary, because beneficiaries
do get an automatic increment on or next week April
the first. So the argument I think is a good
one from the government given that this is coming out
of the budget allowance and that's the money that the

(20:21):
government leaves itself to spend over and above policies that
may be tweaked during a budget, so it doesn't require
more borrowing. And I think that's a pretty good thing.
I mean, for a year, this is going to cost
around three hundred and seventy million dollars, a lot of money,

(20:42):
but it's going to be financed, like I say, through
the allowance and the budget, so it's not money that's
been simply sprayed around as we've seen in the recent past.

Speaker 3 (20:54):
And that is something that Nichola Willis is very keen
to kind of regiteration to prove. Isn't it that she
is being very disciplined when it comes to the finance.

Speaker 6 (21:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (21:07):
Well, the problem is for Neckla is that you know,
you've still got to borrow money, and they are still
borrowing money because the country can't survive if you don't
have the basics in place, like good hospital services, good
education services. If we're a welfare country, so we've got
a massive welfare bill every year, we've got an aging

(21:30):
population and that's going to be a big problem in
the future to finance that. So you know, there are
many other, I guess parts to the pie that make
up a government spend. And this is one way to
provide temporary relief at fifty dollars a week. So and
you've got to be working, and that's the whole point.

(21:53):
You've got to have children, so it's ready for the
children as much as for anything else.

Speaker 3 (21:59):
But Barry, I think that Nichola Willis is having a
good crisis. She is across or you know what I mean,
she's across this. They're organized, they're they're planning. There there there,
she is fronting up and during the press conferences and
the Prime Minister is sort of wandering around the stadium
and christ Church, she looks like, you know, she looks

(22:20):
like she's got this. It's not a bad thing an
election year, right, Well.

Speaker 7 (22:24):
No it's not. And you know, the twice weekly briefings
on the petrol situation have in my view sort of
become something like the COVID daily updates that we have
from the Pulpit of Truth and the beehive. And it's
quite interesting that they've changed away from the pulpit. They're
not in the beehive. There's red. They've changed to steers,

(22:47):
you know, the main steers in the four year of
Parliament where they give their press conferences. So they don't
want it to be couched in the same way as
those Pulpit of Truth press conferences. And that that was
the label of course, that was attached to it by
Jasin Dadurn, who said, if you want to find the truth,

(23:08):
you listen to us here and as it turned out,
that wasn't quite the case.

Speaker 3 (23:13):
Bury your thoughts on the Green's housing policy they announce
this week.

Speaker 7 (23:17):
Well, you know, look, the thing is it's very easy
to be ideological when you're in opposition, and they did
launch their housing policy this week that there will be
no cause evictions, that they'll be scrapped, basically making it
harder for that landlords to get rid of people that

(23:38):
they don't want in their flats. There will be a
rental warrant of fitness and Register of landlords and property
managers introduced. I don't think that's such a bad thing
that their policy is called a home for everybody. And
of course, as we've seen with countless governments right from
the time that I came into politics more than forty

(24:01):
years ago, it's the same argument. We want to house population,
but it's not always possible, and we've seen sort of
growing homelessness. You only have to walk along carrying a
happy road in Auckland, or I like to name it
crack a happy road where you know a lot of
drug deals being done, people are sleeping on the street,

(24:22):
people are walking and really doing very little, and there's
somebody I was talking to a very senior person in
the government administration yesterday about the problem, and he was saying,
rightly or wrong, in the past, what we used to do,
you'd never have these people in the streets because they

(24:42):
would be not incarcerated, but they would be in some
sort of asylum. Asylum's a bad words that comesures up everything,
but somewhere where mentally where people are mentally dealt with
and then released back into society. And I was saying
to him yesterday, Francesca, that I remember being in the

(25:03):
United States in the eighties and Ronald Reagan basically expelled
everybody and closed down these institutions, and the result on
the streets was just so tangible. You can see them
all over the place. And we've got an element of
that now because I think we are in a society

(25:26):
about where the United States was back then.

Speaker 3 (25:30):
Barrie, thank you so much for your time this morning.
Love you to have you join us. It is twenty
two to ten. Can we say the changes coming this week?
We're going to let you know what is going what
is taking place, and i't forget that. Art to ten,
we have the twenty twenty six Best Actor Bafter winner
Robert Ramio with us to talk about his new film

(25:53):
I Swear.

Speaker 1 (25:54):
It's a Sunday session full show podcast on iHeartRadio powered
by News Talks AB.

Speaker 3 (26:01):
Thank you for your texts. Using public transport is good
in theory, but practically there are not enough use not
enough buses to the station or car parks and Wellington
to actually use public transport. And another person, I think
the government would be better subsidizing transport companies, you know,
the ones that are transporting food and things. That would
mean everybody could benefit from lower costs of living. Thank

(26:23):
for your text, Malcolm. Right, well, come Wednesday, your paycheck
might feel a little bit lighter. New key we Saver
rules coming into effect on April first, will see the
default contribution rate increase from three to three point five percent.
Changes will also see sixteen and seventeen year olds eligible
for employer contributions. To talk us through the changes and

(26:43):
the impact that they may have. Co founder of path
find a keyw Saver, John Barry joins me now, Good.

Speaker 10 (26:48):
Morning, John, morning, Francesca, thanks for having me today.

Speaker 3 (26:51):
Okay, so these changes coming into effect on Wednesday, are
they a good thing for New Zealanders?

Speaker 10 (26:57):
Personally? I think they are a great thing, and that
you mentioned the two changes. One is contribution rates that
employers and employees are putting in and the other is
involvement to sixteen and seventeen year old in Key we
save us. So the first one, the employer and employee changes.
The step up from three percent to three and a
half percent, means we're increasing from six percent contribution total

(27:17):
to seven percent from Wednesday, and this means we save
them more from our retirement. Will give people over the
long term much better sum of money to enjoy their retirement.
But we've got to remember as well, there's still a
gap between us in Australia. So this gets us to
seven percent. Australia at the moment their contribution rate is
twelve percent, and we've got another step up coming in
two years time that's already locked in, so it'll take

(27:39):
it from three and a half to four percent, which
will get us eight percent. But we're still we need
to go further, slowly, further over time to keep increasing it.

Speaker 3 (27:47):
So what impact did these changes going to have on
Kiwi's both the employers and the employees.

Speaker 10 (27:55):
Yeah, if we talk first about the employers, a lot
of employers probably won't be stoked about this. It's an
increase in the contribution that they're making towards their staffs
Kiwi saver and you know, if you think in the
economy at the moment, hospitality, retail, you know there are
plenty of businesses that are struggling and don't want this

(28:15):
increased cost. And if they're hiring younger workers too, So
the sixteen and seventeen year olds are now being included
in the contributions. So previously you had to be eighteen
to get the contributions. Now it's sixteen, so businesses will
be incurring that cost as well, which, to be honest,
I think it's only fair if young people are paying
PAYE that they also get the benefit of KIV saber.

(28:37):
But a lot of businesses won't be stoked about that.
From an individual's perspective, so if you're contributing to a
KIV saver, it will just be a small incremental step up.
But we've just got to remember small saving amounts over
a long period of time really add up to the
final amount you end end up with in retirement. So
for someone who's earning eighty thousand dollars, stepping up from

(28:58):
three percent three and a half percent is another eight
dollars a week, So it doesn't sound significant, but I
sort of recognize that with the cost of living at
the moment, for some people who are rarely struggling to
balance the budget, that may not be helpful. But equally,
we've got to think about the long term getting KIYI
saver at sixty five.

Speaker 3 (29:16):
But is there ever a good time, John, I mean
you made that comparison there to Australia, you know, just
before we absolutely have to step up. I mean it
is really tough, but you know is there for a
good time to make these changes. We just got to
get on with that, don't we look.

Speaker 10 (29:29):
Yeah, absolutely right, we've got to get on with it. And
I think we need to get up to the same
level Australia at a twelve percent, and we need to
do it in small steps over a long period of time.
Even if we came up with a ten year plan
to achieve it. We need to achieve it. And it's never,
like you said, never a good time, but we need
to get on with it because the end result. And
we don't always compare ourselves to Australia, but we look
across the ditch and at the moment people there are retiring.

(29:52):
The average retirement retirement amount is four hundred thousand dollars
and it's different for men and women. Men are four
hundred and twenty two thousand, women are three fifty thousand.
So there is that gender gap in New Zealand. So
we're comparing to four hundred thousand in Australia. It's seventy
thousand in New Zealand, much much lower. It's austraights five
times higher. And again there's a gender gap in New Zealand.
Mean a eighty two thousand women of sixty thousand. But

(30:14):
we need to close that gap so New Zealanders get
a great retirement and can make the life choice they
want when they're when they're retired.

Speaker 3 (30:23):
Oh look, I think we can all remember. I can
remember my family in Australia decades ago complaining about the
fact that they were going to have this compulsory souper
that they had to do. And they're all sitting there
now laughing away, going isn't this fantastic? Do we've got
this other increase? So what we have to do is
we have to balance the increase in savings against the

(30:43):
cost of living pressures. We've got the default rate's going
to rise again in April twenty twenty eight to four percent.
Is that good timing? Should we be doing it faster?
As you say you want that sort of a ten
year plan in place, Is there anything beyond that that
you'd like to see put in place or is it
already put in place?

Speaker 10 (31:03):
Well, i'd I'd like to see a long term plan,
But ultimately we need to drive the key Wesaber balances
up because New Zealand super is becoming a much much
larger cost for the company, sorry the country overall, and
if you're in your twenties, thirties and forties, you absolutely
will need to save more for retirement because the superannuation

(31:23):
settings will at some point change. The challenge we have
in New Zealand is that at the moment, one dollar
and every eight dollars the government spends is on Super
and it's growing faster than GDP, so the problem is
getting bigger and we have fewer tax payers who are
supporting the super payments. So if you go back to
nineteen sixties, for every one in retirement, there were seven

(31:46):
people working in paying tax. Now for every person retired,
there's four people working in paying tax, and they're on
the current trajectory. In twenty sixty five, for everyone in
retirement there will be two people paying tax. So there
just won't be the tax base to continue with the
payments we've gotten. And on top of that, people are
living longer so that they receive SUPER for longer and

(32:07):
their figure demands on the health system. So we have
this cost that we're building up over the decades ahead
that we need to deal with, and you know, the
challenges coming up with solutions, and one of the solutions
is for individuals to save more for their retirement. On
top of that, you know, always say to my kids,
don't just bring their problem, to bring their solutions. But
unfortunately you hear the solutions aren't particularly cheerful. The part

(32:28):
of the part of the answers. We've got the Color Fund,
so twenty years ago, so Michael Cullen set up a
fund to help us through the twenty fifties and twenty
and sixties to smooth the payments and the big blearning
cost and that fund has ground about ninety ninety billion dollars,
so it's quite large. It won't answer the problem, but
it will be part of the solution. But unfortunately, the

(32:50):
other ways of solving it are either increased taxes, which
is never popular, and you know, increase gest or increase
marginal tax rates. No one's going to be too excited
about that. And the other one is just tinker with
the superannuation set and see us sixty five, you get
it at sixty seven or sixty eight or means test it. Again,

(33:12):
not popular solutions, but we are going to need to
do something, and are people that are listening there in
their twenties and thirties and forties the superannuation settings will
be different when they get to retirement. So Sagamore and
Kiwi Saber, this idea of every year just increasing the
contribution rates by a small amount is really really important
to give Kiwis a great retirement.

Speaker 3 (33:34):
John Barry, really appreciate your time this morning. Thank you
so much. John is the co founder of Path Find
a Key Saber. Keen to hear from you ninety two
ninety two if you know how you're feeling about the
Kiwi Saver. The default contribution rate increasing this this week
from three to three point five percent? Is that going

(33:55):
to put pressure on you and your household? And if
you're an employer, how what sort of impact is that
going to have on you? It is eleven to ten
news storksb.

Speaker 1 (34:06):
The headlines and the hard questions. It's the Mic Hosking.

Speaker 11 (34:10):
Breakfast to twelve to seventeen year olds read the myocaditis.

Speaker 12 (34:13):
What we do know to be true is Hipkins did
get the advice.

Speaker 2 (34:16):
Simeon Brown's a health minister and with.

Speaker 13 (34:18):
Us it's very clear that Chris Hipkins knew about these concerns.
He was provided advice in late December twenty twenty one
and when they were provided advice, they didn't ask any
questions or do anything about it. And the reality is
he came on your show said he didn't know. He's
got questions he needs to answer, so.

Speaker 14 (34:32):
He was hiding.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
But the COVID inquiry missed.

Speaker 11 (34:34):
The COVID inquiry says they claim they didn't see it,
didn't know, and they accepted that.

Speaker 13 (34:39):
The COVID inquiry found that the Ministry of Health didn't
provide the information clearly enough and I think that's an
absolute finding.

Speaker 11 (34:45):
Back tomorrow at six am the Mic Hosking Breakfast with Avida,
News Talk ZEDB Heep.

Speaker 2 (34:51):
It's Simple, It's Sunday the Sunday Session.

Speaker 1 (34:53):
With Francesca Rudkine and Whitkles for the best selection of
great readings.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
News Talk ZEDB.

Speaker 3 (35:25):
This is another lovely voice of Amelia Power. She is
a Kiwi artist up and coming. This is her latest single.
It's called Kingfisher. It's introspective and soulful track exploring heartbreak
and healing and personal reflections like this. It's very easy
to listen to, isn't it Anyway. It's a bit of

(35:46):
a fresh sound for her. You might have heard of
her before, but I think you're going to hear a
lot more from her coming up. I thank you very
much for your text. John textas say that I've worked
in the jury sector and it's a slippery slope. Most
top end retail stores in ninety percent stocked with product
made in Asia. Buyer be whereas they have no idea

(36:08):
support local. Another textire free public transport for a twelve
month period would seem a much more intelligent option. My
second choice would better remove GST from phil for six
to twelve months. That would be approximately sixty cents a letter.
The country only needs to borrow due to tax relief
given to the extra wealthy and three billion allowances given

(36:28):
to landlords. Thank you for your text. Great to hear
the conversation. But please, the word free does not exist.
Free public transport is actually taxpayer transport. There are no
free lunches anywhere for anybody that is working. The word
free should be changed to a taxpayer funded transport, along
with all the other handouts that governments across the board
are willing to put up with. Well, it's just like

(36:51):
the targeted payment really, isn't it. And Muz is very
concerned the train's stopping for maintenance. Is this the worst
timing ever? Not great timing. Look, do some research on that.
If you do normally catch the trains. I believe it
is over the school holidays. It has something to do
with CRL, which you know will be great once it's
up and running. But yeah, no, you're quite right, it's

(37:14):
not great timing whatsoever. Very quickly, I just want to
thank Andrew Dickins for filling in for me last weekend.
My goodness. I know we live in a special country,
but it amazes me every time I head out into
the bush and into the countryside just how incredible New
Zealand is. I had an amazing trip. But I went
to Wanaka, got on a jet boat the Wilkin River.

(37:37):
Jet guys touck us up up the river. We walked
into Siberia Valley with a terrifically named Mount Dreadful greeted
us in the distance, and it does look Dreadful. There's
also a Mountallfoot, which is quite funny as well. Anyway,
trip up to Crucible Lake if you've ever been there, remarkable,
two days, incredible trip down there. Got it was just
good to get off the grid for a few days
and not talk about the price of fuel. It is

(38:00):
five to ten.

Speaker 1 (38:02):
The Sunday Session Full show podcast on my Heart Radio
News Talks'.

Speaker 3 (38:10):
This is a little bit of Harry Styles. This is
another song of his latest album called Kiss All the
Time Disco. Occasionally the song was called pop. So this
is going to take us to the end of the hour.
Coming up Afternoons and Sport is the star and the
director of the BAFTA Award winning film I Swear. Robert
Aramaiyo and Kirk Jones are going to join me to

(38:31):
talk about this incredible film based on the life of
Tourette's syndrome advocate John Davidson. So we're going to talk
to Robert about his quite shocking but very deserving Best
Actor Baftwin and Kirk about why he decided to use
money from selling his house to make this film rather
than relying on a studio. More on I Swear.

Speaker 1 (38:49):
Next, Welcome to the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin and

(39:12):
Wiggles for the best selection of great reeds us.

Speaker 3 (39:24):
Good morning at a seven past ten. You're with the
Sunday Session. British newcomer Robert Aramaiah was the talk of
this year's Bafter Awards. Robert was nominated for Lead Actor
against a cast of Hollywood heavyweights Leonardo DiCaprio, Timothy Shalla,
May Michael B. Jordan. He was a complete underdog, but
he won. His best active victory was for the film

(39:44):
I Swear, when Robert depicts pioneering Scottish Tourette's campaigner John Davidson.

Speaker 15 (39:50):
You're key with a textan this week, textaks, we.

Speaker 2 (39:54):
Need to get your mane.

Speaker 12 (39:55):
I can see he's after edication.

Speaker 1 (40:03):
I don't think Charrette's is the problem lord of it
to It's the problem educate number.

Speaker 3 (40:13):
It's a good flick, a real crowd pleaser. It's honest
and brutal at times, but also very funny and compassionate.
Robert is incredible in it, A very deserving winner of
the Better Lead Actor. Robert Aramaio and director Kirk Jones
with me now. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Thank
you so much for being with us. Kirk, Can I
start with you? How did you first discover John Davidson?

(40:37):
And here about his story?

Speaker 11 (40:39):
It has to be through the very first documentary there
was about John, which is called John's Not Mad. It
was about thirty years ago when I sat down four
years ago to think about my next film. I remembered it,
and if I'm honest, I don't think i'd ever forgotten it.
There were three documentaries in total throughout his life, and

(41:00):
I always I wasn't a writer and I wasn't a
director in nineteen eighty nine, but I just knew that
there was a great story there at least that there
was a great story starting and a very interesting journey,
and I wanted to know more about John. And despite
the fact there were three documentaries, I really felt that
there was, you know, the opportunity to deliver a full

(41:24):
length feature film which brought John's story up to date
and really showed what an extraordinary, you know, tragic, emotionally engaging,
but also really humorous journey he'd been on through throughout
the last thirty years of his life.

Speaker 3 (41:43):
When you're very much captured all that, Robert, what challenges
come with playing a character like this? I mean, obviously
you're handling someone's personal story, but you're also depicting something
like Torette's.

Speaker 2 (41:56):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

Speaker 16 (41:59):
Big challenges, Yeah, lots of big challenges.

Speaker 12 (42:01):
I think that we all thought a.

Speaker 16 (42:03):
Sort of collective responsibility really on the set, all of us,
everyone about John's life and John's story. We were constantly
sharing stories on the set that we'd had, you know,
because everybody, you know, a lot of people met John
either because they went to Gallas Shields or that they
met him when he came to where we were shooting

(42:24):
or something like that. So everybody had felt like they
had some I think some sort of personal connection with John,
understood him to a degree, and so we're passionate about
telling his story in the most authentic way really. So yeah,
so I think it was a shared responsibility. Really, we
all felt that we just wanted to make a good,
you know, a good authentic version of his life, and.

Speaker 3 (42:49):
That you did. Did you know much about Turrettes before
you started shooting, before you took on this role?

Speaker 2 (42:54):
No, No, I didn't.

Speaker 16 (42:55):
I think I would say I had a very two
dimensional view of Tourettess and you know, like a like
a very sort basic understanding of what it was. Very
quickly though, as I learned as much as I could
about about it and obviously about how John lives with it,
and what John's ticks historically have been.

Speaker 12 (43:16):
And and you.

Speaker 16 (43:18):
Know, because everybody with Tourette's is different largely, and also
the other conditions that they live with are.

Speaker 2 (43:25):
Different as well.

Speaker 16 (43:25):
So yeah, so I just learned as much as I could,
as quickly as I could, and most of that came
from John, but a lot as well from other people
with incredible stories. Well, I was very fortunate to meet
and learned from.

Speaker 3 (43:39):
So you spent quite a bit of time with John.

Speaker 16 (43:41):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, as much time as I could really,
which is great because he's such a great guy and
you know he's he's you know, he's got an amazing
since of humor, and he's got a great lik in
Gala Shields and you also you know dott is there
and you know, like there's like as it was. It
was a really amazing time for me and just reinforced
I think how how important it was to tell his

(44:05):
story in this way, because in a film you just
get the chance to show maybe maybe different different sides
to what it is just to be a human. Then
you're doing a documentary. You know, that's why the two
things are different. So that's say I was really excited
to show different different sides of him and stuff.

Speaker 3 (44:21):
I think most of us probably hid the same knowledge
that you had before you started this film. When it
comes to Reats, we sort of had this generalized view
of what it is. What surprised you the most is
you got to know John and you sort of got
a bit of understanding of the syndrome and sort of
the challenges that that gives somebody who's living with.

Speaker 16 (44:38):
It, The individuality of that, I think the singularity of
it really that you know that it's like that there
are some people who live with tourette who have ticks
that you don't see, you know, that that don't present
in a sort of visible way, you know, or ticks
that people have that people think of something else, you know.

(45:00):
I think that was one of the first things that
really surprised me, that there is an element of confusion,
you know, in the initial sense of meeting somebody with
Tourette's as to sometimes as to what condition they're actually
living with. So, like, you know, that was like that
was a big eye opening moment for me because it's
so singular to the person.

Speaker 3 (45:18):
You're incredible in this film, Robert, Are you sick of
people telling you they.

Speaker 16 (45:23):
Oh, well, I mean that's nice of you to say that,
thank you.

Speaker 3 (45:26):
No, no, no, Kirk's having a little giggle. No, you
really are. The two of you work quite collaboratively in
developing John scripts.

Speaker 11 (45:36):
Yeah, I think.

Speaker 2 (45:39):
You know.

Speaker 11 (45:39):
I wrote the script before any casts were involved, and
that contained things like tics and physical tics, of verbal
tics and physical tics. But as with all writers, or
as with all directors, you come to a point where
the priority is to get ready to start filming. So

(46:01):
I was, I was casting, I was looking at locations,
and that was around about the time that Rob came
to Galashields and started working with John, probably over a
period of about two or three months, and we stayed
in contact pretty much daily. I would say, so, you know, Rob,
I'd get a call. You know, I've been looking for
locations all day and I get a call from Rob

(46:21):
and he says, you know, did you know that John
kissed lampposts? And I said, I didn't know that. Now
he said, yeah, he kisses them, you know, if they're
not straight, if they're the wrong color. And I said, well,
you never told me that, and I'd so that went
straight in the script. And I think one of the
things that Rob brought, especially in the early days, was

(46:44):
Rob kept saying to me, we have to make sure
that we include everything that relates to Tourette's because first
of all, you know, you'll hear people say if you
meet one person with tourettes, you've only met one person
with turettes. Everyone is completely different. Secondly, it's very rare

(47:06):
or people will actually say, you will never meet anyone
just regret that they have comorbid conditions. They have levels
of autism, ADHD, O c D, high anxiety, intrusive thoughts.
So Rob in particular kept giving me, I won't say,

(47:26):
a hard time, but he just kept reminding me saying,
you know, we got we've got to show the OCD,
We've got a show, and putting the finger under the ketel,
and so he would he would tell me about that,
and I think, well, how am I going to get
that in? And then okay, then we got it in.
But Rob and I worked together because any information that
Rob had, any information that John or anyone had, I

(47:49):
would I was, you know, more than happy to listen
to and if possible, get it into the script because
all I wanted to do was serve John and serve
the condition as well. So I think it's fair to
say that you know, there were no ego. Sorry, there
were no egos at work. It was it's like, let's
gather everything and do the very best job we can

(48:10):
for John Cook.

Speaker 3 (48:12):
When you have two actors playing a character, so Scott
Ellis Watson does a beautiful job as well playing the
young John, and then Robert comes in. Do you get
those two actors together at all to work on the
character is to make sure that there's sort of some
continuity that I've always wondered that when you've got you
go from young to old in a film.

Speaker 11 (48:29):
I think sometimes it would be justified. It was discussed
at the time. I was keen that Rob and Scott
spent some time to each other or with each other
away from the set, just so that they got to
know each other even though they weren't in the same
scene together. And when we realized that both young John
and adult John would have to fly fish, we organized

(48:52):
an afternoon which was great. So John Davidson was there,
Scott was there, I was there, Rob was there, Suki
the dog was there, you know, and we.

Speaker 2 (49:00):
Were all by the river.

Speaker 11 (49:02):
But that was really just to help Scott in particular,
familiarize himself with Rob and John, and you know, because
he's never acted before. Scott at all. But with regards
to working together, I think the young John, and if
we say that Rob's when Rob first appears, he's in

(49:22):
his early twenties. As John Davidson. John Stretts had developed
so much in those kind of eight years, nine no, sorry,
thirteen years, that really there wasn't any point in them
spending time together saying, oh, this is how John ticks
with his arm. This is you know, young John and
old John. There were no real similarities. So for that reason,

(49:45):
I think it was easier for Rob to focus on
adult John and Scott to focus on young John. And
remembering that, you know, we had an incredible opportunity to
look back on the documentaries that had been made about John.
So when Scott said to me, you know, you know,
what was John like when he was fourteen? Or even

(50:07):
when he said to John, what were you like when
you were fourteen? We both said, just look at the documentary.
There's an hour long documentary there that's John when he
was fourteen. So Scott found that very reassuring. And it's
very unusual that you have, you have questions from a
character as a director and you just say, don't ask me,
just look at the documentary.

Speaker 3 (50:27):
Just go do your homework. Yeah, Cook, Is it true
that you sold the family home to completely finance this film?

Speaker 11 (50:39):
Not quite, but very very close. My wife and I
had sold our house of twenty years. We moved to
a different part of the country and we decided to
rent in the short term. And while we were renting,
so while we were you know, literally had every penny
that I'd ever earned in a thirty year career was

(51:00):
sitting in the bank ready for our next house. As
is normal, I wrote the script. I was very worried,
and with good reason. We only have one meeting that
people would want to soften it, they want to dumb
it down, they would want to reduce the swearing. And
I'd promise John that I wouldn't let that happen. I
promised John that I would tell an honest version of

(51:22):
the script. And I promise myself. You know, when you've
been making films for thirty years, you do not want
to constantly be taking notes from people softening stuff, dumbing
it down, not only for my you know, for my reasons,
but people forget that. You then have to pass those
onto the cast, because the person or persons that are

(51:43):
paying for a production will say I want less swearing,
so then you have no option but to reduce the swearing.
And then Rob says to me, and Peter Mullen says
to me, well, why are you taking up the swear,
And I have to say, well, that's how it is.
We have to do it.

Speaker 12 (51:58):
I have to do it.

Speaker 11 (51:58):
So I didn't want any of that. I wanted complete
creative freedom. So I decided the only way to do
it was to ask the bank if they would lend
the money for the film, based on the fact that
they had everything we had already and at that point
I hadn't asked my wife. So I asked her one
evening and literally she said, if you feel strongly about

(52:20):
it and passionately about it, then let's do it. And
we never had an argument, we never had a discussion.
I filled out many forms for the bank to make
it happen, and that was it. And every night I
came home from the set and I would go into
my apartment, sit down and literally think, I am so
glad that we did that. I had not once and

(52:41):
still even though we've not seen anything come back yet,
not once have I had any regret over that. I
was so grateful that we literally bought our creative freedom.

Speaker 3 (52:54):
Robert, you won a Befter for this year, up against
Leonardo DiCaprio, Timothy Schallamy, Michael B. Jordan for Lead Actor.
What goes through your head when your name's called out?

Speaker 2 (53:05):
Oh, I mean.

Speaker 16 (53:08):
Shock, so much shock, because I'd won the Rising Star
Award and I couldn't believe that. I felt so unbelievably
honored by that, and so I was still sort of
like processing that and what just happened. I can't believe
that this just happened. And you know, like I was
really honored to be in that category, but I didn't

(53:30):
ever think that I was gonna win it. So then
when they said my name, I just honestly could not
believe it. I really really couldn't believe it. So it was,
you know, it was a lovely, lovely on air and acknowledgment.
But obviously the main thing that you hope from all
of this stuff is that people just watch the film more,
that they go and google Tourette's or John Davidson and

(53:53):
learn learn more about his life, you know. So it's
you know, I feel like the whole Bafter thing led
people to watching the watching the film more, you know,
like getting nominated and stuff.

Speaker 3 (54:04):
Because I mean, you have been part of some very
big shows, the Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones.
Where does this film sit for you sort of within
your body of work? How special is it to you?

Speaker 16 (54:15):
I mean, the biggest challenge and you know, certainly, and
I feel so so passionate about his story. And I
don't know, I just think when you meet John you
just feel like.

Speaker 2 (54:29):
You really just.

Speaker 16 (54:29):
Want to do you know, you want to you want
you want to do a good job for him because
he's because he's such an incredible man. So you know,
I just feel glad that people seem to be watching
it and enjoying it, and I feel really lucky to
be a part of it.

Speaker 3 (54:45):
Robert, thank you so much for the incredible for months, Kirk,
for the absolutely beautiful film. Really appreciate your time this morning.

Speaker 12 (54:52):
Thank you, Thank you.

Speaker 3 (54:54):
That was director Kirk Jones and lad Ector Robert Aramayo.
The film I Swear is in cinemas now. It is
twenty two pasteen.

Speaker 2 (55:03):
Relax, it's still the weekend.

Speaker 1 (55:05):
It's the Sunday with Francesca Rudgin and Wiggles for the
best selection of great reads us talks that'd be when you're.

Speaker 3 (55:13):
Looking for a good book to read. Wikeles knows that
the range of choice can be overwhelming. It's important that
you find the one that's right for you or for
the person to whom you might be giving it. And
that's where the power of recommendation comes in. That's why
Wickles offer the Top one hundred, the Kids Top fifty
and Jones Picks. The Top one hundred and the Kids
Top fifty have been voted for by the readers of

(55:33):
New Zealand. So if thousands of people have loved them
enough to vote for them, chances are you'll love them too.
And Jones Picks is a selection of books by the
Wickkeles head book buyer. These are titles that she's read.
She loves them. They come with Jones' highest recommendation with
the Top one hundred, Kids Top fifty, Jones Picks plus books, games, puzzles, toys,
Gorgeous station and more. There really is something for everyone

(55:56):
at wit Calls.

Speaker 2 (55:58):
The Sunday Session.

Speaker 3 (56:19):
This is new music from Castaway. The song was called
Heart Attachna. We hit the Boys from Castaway in the
studio late last year. That would lovely Young lads. I
think we're expecting some more new music, a new album
from them pretty soon. That we right, it is time
to talk entertainment, and Steve Neuill joins me. Now, good morning, Steve.

Speaker 15 (56:37):
Good morning. Here you going very good.

Speaker 3 (56:39):
Thank you you have have you been watching last one?

Speaker 2 (56:42):
Laughing? Oh?

Speaker 15 (56:43):
I sure have and I'm looking forward to spending some
time on the couch. So that's a great Sunday afternoon.
It is a very show, this one.

Speaker 3 (56:48):
This is This is the UK comedy show that's hosted
by Jimmy krmra isn't it. And he puts a group
of comedians in a room and they all have to
make each other laugh, and it's you're not allowed to laugh.

Speaker 15 (56:59):
That's pretty much. It sounds so simple, and in some
respects it is, because they're all basically doing the best
kind of dead pan performances trying to get each other
to crack up. There's certain sort of specific challenges or
performances will happen during the show as well, but often
it's just the lightest, tiniest little conversational things that you'll
have just a bunch of folks hanging on a couch
together and suddenly they'll all be storming off in different

(57:22):
directions trying not to crack up laughing. I love a
good international format TV show, and this one is with
thirty odd international versions of the show. It's based on
a Japanese show called Documental Wow. And you can just
see white translates right, like the idea of putting funny
people in a room and they have to make it
to the laugh and they're not.

Speaker 3 (57:41):
Allowed to laugh.

Speaker 15 (57:41):
It's a completely translates across cultures.

Speaker 3 (57:45):
I watched the first episode and I was like, oh yeah,
just sort of didn't quite didn't quite work for me.
It was kind of funny that we did the second
one and then we started laughing. By the third one,
we were just laughing the whole way through. It's a
little bit if you haven't seen it before, it's a
bit of a slow grow at first.

Speaker 15 (58:01):
Perhaps, Yeah, and some familiarity with the cast as well.
So Season two, which has just launched recently, includes Alan Carr,
who of course was a standard of celebrity Traders, David
Mitchell of Peep Show, Diane Morgan aka Philhmena Kunk, Mazie Adam,
and Bob Mortimer returns from his appearance in the first
season as well, some really really dry wits in that group.

Speaker 3 (58:22):
Actually, you've just nailed it. It took us a few
epps to get to know the people in that because
we went familiar with them and then we became more
familiar with them than they became. Funnier. There we go.

Speaker 15 (58:31):
So that's on Prime and that's yeah, it's a great
Sunday afternoon watch. Such a simple premise, very very funny.

Speaker 3 (58:37):
One of my favorite shows on Prime is Deadlock, and
of course season two is out and if you don't
mind a bit of swearing this, yeah, but a bit
of swear thet fun this is laugh out loud funny.

Speaker 15 (58:51):
Yeah, definitely differentely has that element to it. The first
season of Deadlock felt a bit more directly like a
funny broad Church than season two. It's moved from Tasmania
to the Northern Territory, sit in Darwin.

Speaker 2 (59:05):
Lots of.

Speaker 15 (59:07):
Aar, lots of crocs, lots of khaki shorts, and as
Madeline Sami said on the show last week, if I've
got this number right, an average of sixty eight point
three swears per episode for her character, the foulmouthed cop Eddie.
The second season enjoyable plotting, but I felt like perhaps
the drama and the comedy were a bit woven together

(59:28):
better in the first season, or they just needed to
sort of go a bit more over the top on
the gags so I wouldn't feel so familiar the center
balance is tip more to comedy for me.

Speaker 3 (59:38):
This season it very much is, and I felt like
they really took on board the characteristics of the locals
in the area and mind that maybe a little bit
more than they needed to.

Speaker 15 (59:52):
I mean, stereotypes abound. I love that in some scenes
you'll find people that with like three or four cast members,
each of whom you could imagine a picturing themselves in
different styles of shows. There might be drama like gentle, comedy,
utterly absurd, common like all kind of taking place at
the same time balances. A lot of times, I really
liked the show. I haven't quite finnished someone. Oh okay,

(01:00:13):
how it wraps up?

Speaker 3 (01:00:15):
I might have finished that one up. That was a
binge run for me. Okay, great, So we've got one
last one laughing.

Speaker 15 (01:00:21):
That's on Prime Videos.

Speaker 3 (01:00:24):
Okay, go, you've got Prime You've got lots of entertainment
this afternoon.

Speaker 15 (01:00:27):
Last one laughing. There's two UK season. Season two has
just started and you can always tray luck with the
international versions.

Speaker 3 (01:00:33):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 15 (01:00:34):
Day's funny after the subtitled who can say?

Speaker 3 (01:00:38):
I don't know if you have to read the gag,
it's a good question. Research that and let me know
next week. All right, then, thank you, Steve. We'll talk
next week. It is twenty eight to eleven.

Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
It's the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin on News Talk
z B.

Speaker 3 (01:00:57):
Joining us now with her science study of the week,
doctor Micheldeck and sing, good morning, good morning. I think
it's fair to say that you've completely changed my perception
of cock this morning with this new study that we're
going to talk about.

Speaker 17 (01:01:09):
I changed my own perception when I found the study,
which why I brought it in. Also, if you're eating
your breakfast right now, just we're going to be talking
about Creepy Crawley's. So if that ix, you just put
your spoon down.

Speaker 3 (01:01:19):
He's fat. We're talking about Creepy Crawley's in love.

Speaker 17 (01:01:22):
I know who thought? Who knew cockroaches had a dating ritual?

Speaker 3 (01:01:27):
I don't know.

Speaker 17 (01:01:28):
This is what we brought it in today. So this
is published and you can read it if you want.
It's in the journal Royal Society Open Science. And it
found that some cockcroaches form lifelong partnerships, but only after
they eat their partner's wings. So here's this study. So
this is a specific type of cockroach. It's called the

(01:01:49):
Salgania taiwannesus cockroach, and they often live in wood bark
and rotten logs. And what they found is some of
these cock croaches appear to form exclusive, long term partnerships.
But the way they start that relationship is literally they
eat each other's wings off. And so as they were
looking at these cockroaches and going that's a bizarre behavior,

(01:02:11):
they wanted to understand whether this eating each other's wings
had a deeper social purpose. So they took cockroaches and
they put them in a box. And those of them
who they put them in a box that hadn't eaten
each other's wings. And they put some in a box
who had eaten each other's wings, and they said, okay, cockroaches.
Here you are in this box too, cockroaches. And then

(01:02:32):
they introduced a third cockroach. And what was so interesting
is if they hadn't eaten each other's wings. So they
hadn't dated or whatever this is. They all hung out
with the third cockroach like they were buddies.

Speaker 3 (01:02:44):
But if they.

Speaker 17 (01:02:45):
Did introduce seriously the third wheel cockroach to those who
had already eaten each other's wings, they both attacked it violently.
It didn't matter which of the cockroaches it was. They
both were like, no, get out of our box.

Speaker 3 (01:03:00):
This is our box.

Speaker 17 (01:03:00):
We are now a couple, which I just imagine these
scientists like so.

Speaker 3 (01:03:05):
That were joined in it. You're not having my men,
you're not even my woman.

Speaker 10 (01:03:08):
It was.

Speaker 17 (01:03:08):
It wasn't just like the men of finding the woman.
They were both like, get out of here, this is
our box. We are a couple, and they weren't interested
at all. So I think this kind of I wasn't
what I was expecting from cockroach research Number one.

Speaker 3 (01:03:20):
Number two.

Speaker 17 (01:03:20):
If you're a scientist and this is your job.

Speaker 3 (01:03:23):
Just go what did you do today? Any Well?

Speaker 17 (01:03:25):
You know, I put cockroaches in a box and watch
them fight each other.

Speaker 3 (01:03:27):
So is a partnership like this common with and seeks?
I'm just trying to think of.

Speaker 17 (01:03:32):
So it's one of the first times we've actually seen
it in insects. That we have seen this type of
behavior in mammals and you know, you know, it happens
all the time, but it is unusual for insects and
we haven't really witnessed this type of behavior and insects before.
And actually the researchers claim that this is the first
experimental evidence that insects can form exclusive partnerships using behaviors

(01:03:53):
that are similar to those in animals, which much more
complex brains. Not saying that cock croaches are stupid, but
they do have tiny brains. And what is also interesting
in the study is I found out that cock croaches
are biparental, so both me and the female care for
their young. So these are actually quite cute. I've actually
totally changed my perspective on cockroaches, and I still don't

(01:04:14):
want them in my house, but I thought it was
surprising that they have this complex social behavior for such
a little insect.

Speaker 3 (01:04:20):
Do you know if we have this kind of cock
croach in music? I do not know. No, isn't it fascinating? Well,
we know when it comes to fight or flight, what
they do? They fight?

Speaker 17 (01:04:29):
They fight, Some of them can't fly because they make is.

Speaker 3 (01:04:34):
That do you think that's ah, who know, how do
you go into the psychology of it? But is that
an ownership kind of thing?

Speaker 2 (01:04:39):
Is that a?

Speaker 3 (01:04:40):
I suppose it's a It's a very severe form of
showing how committed you are.

Speaker 17 (01:04:44):
Totally committed. They called it in the study. They called
it a biological commitment ceremony.

Speaker 3 (01:04:51):
There we go, fascinating as always, Thank you so much.
Michelle will talk next week.

Speaker 1 (01:04:56):
The Sunday Session Full Show podcast on iHeartRadio powered by
News Talks.

Speaker 3 (01:05:01):
It is time to talk food now, and we're joined
by a residence shif Mike vander Allison.

Speaker 4 (01:05:07):
Good morning, Good morning.

Speaker 3 (01:05:09):
We are going to talk ham and pineapple and chunky
tomato pizza, which is perfect timing because we're heading into
the school holidays in a weekend. It's a great thing
that the kids can whip up.

Speaker 4 (01:05:19):
It would be fantastic. And they may still be some
tomatoes floating around in that do you know?

Speaker 3 (01:05:23):
I cleaned out the last my tomatoes yesterday before I
toore the plants out. Gosh, it's been a good, good,
good season, good crop. Very excited about my tomatoes. When
we just never tire of pizzas day.

Speaker 2 (01:05:38):
And that's it.

Speaker 4 (01:05:39):
And the thing with pizzas that I never ceases to
amaze me, and particularly because we do a lot of
obviously at the cookery school, we do a lot of
cookdog fire. We are part of a certain brand of
fireplace that you cook on. And the first question is
that people ask us is can you do pizzas on them?

(01:06:00):
It's like, yes, you can do pizzas on them, but
you can do all these other things like, oh, that's right, so.

Speaker 2 (01:06:05):
I'm thinking of pezza.

Speaker 4 (01:06:07):
It's just never ceased to amaze me how popular pizzas are.

Speaker 3 (01:06:11):
But pizzas are great. You can feed lots of people quickly.
You can create your own, you know, if you doing
one from I'm going to be honest. I don't make
the bass. I always buy a bass, but everything else
I kind of make.

Speaker 2 (01:06:24):
And gosh, you.

Speaker 3 (01:06:24):
Can just you can put you know, you can make
some pretty delicious things.

Speaker 4 (01:06:28):
But they can be they can be served. I can
remember go like in London, there's a restaurant over there
called Pizza Express, and you know, we were sitting in
this restaurant eating pizza surrounded by one hundred million dollars
worth of artwork on the wolves. You know, It's like
I'm in a pizza restaurant. I can remember when I
was ten, we went to the first pizza hut and

(01:06:48):
new Land and Mom made me put a tie on.

Speaker 3 (01:06:51):
Oh I wish we had a photo of that little
mode pizza heart. That is so funny, that is so cute.
Oh I love it all right, But you're absolutely right.
Tomatoes are good in four at the moment, so whip
us through your ham and pineapple and chunky tomato pizza.

Speaker 4 (01:07:12):
So if you want to make the base, the recipe
for the base is here, so just follow their instructions.
It's pretty easy making your own base. Plus that base
can be frozen, so if you make extra you can
always just roll them out, parbaate them and then you've
got them in the freezer ready to go. And the base,
this particular base uses pretty much half half obial flour

(01:07:34):
and plain flour, so it's quite cool, little bass. So
go ahead, have a look at that recipe make up
the base. What I'll talk about very quickly is that
is the chunky the chunky pizza sauce, super simple into
a pan. You want to go, one onion that's been
roughly diced, two clods of garlic. That's been peeled and clushed.
Saute them off and a little bit of oil. This

(01:07:56):
is how simple the sauces. Saute that off and a
little bit of oil until they just become a little
bit soft. Into there, you've got the last of the tomato.
So I've got six large tomatoes that have been chopped up. Hey,
if you've got no tomatoesz app I would probably go one,
if not two cans of whole peal of tomatoes. Then
into then into that, I've got a stick of rosemy,

(01:08:16):
just chuck the whole stick in because we're going to
pull it out afterwards. A tablespoon of honey, a little
bit of salt, a little bit of pepper. Bring that
to the boil, stir it, reduce it by half. Pull
your rosmary stick out, Bob's your auntie. There's a delicious
tomato sauce hat. You could just set that aside. You
could freeze that in small batches along with your pizza

(01:08:40):
bases that have already been par baked. And you've got
a pizza ready to go, which would be gate. And
you know we'll still got one week left to school holidays,
didn't we so run it for this last week. Give
the kids a little pizzas to take the school and
then in the holidays, you know, when they're whining game,
what's for lunch? Go into the freezer, pull out of bases,
pull out your tomato sauce, a little bit of cheese,
a little bit of tomato, a little bit of ham,

(01:09:03):
a little bit of pineapple.

Speaker 2 (01:09:04):
Done.

Speaker 3 (01:09:05):
I like pizzas. I make a great left over pizza,
which is basically when I open the veggie b I
pull out, you know, some leftover capsicim or spring onion
or just whatever's in there, and it just all goes on,
which is kind a good way of using up your
leftover veggies, isn't it. And you can be you can
be fancy, or you could be veggie here.

Speaker 4 (01:09:24):
You could you could break out some parma ham in
a little bit of truff oil and put on some
mushrooms and some Pontina cheese and you've got an amazing pizza.
There would just be a show stop.

Speaker 3 (01:09:38):
Do you always use sort of a grated mozzarella on
your pizzas?

Speaker 4 (01:09:40):
What do you want fifty to fifty so you kind
of go tasty mozzarella? What kind of gives you the stretch,
the tasty gives you the flavor.

Speaker 3 (01:09:48):
I feel like I've been left with no choice now, Mike,
but to make the bases as well. You've made that
very clear. There's a simple recipe here for me, so
I shall do that these holidays. Thank you so much
for the recipe. You can get the recipe good from
scratch dot co dot inzied or of course you can
hit two newstalks dB dot co dot in zid Ford
Slash Sunday. It is fourteen to eleven.

Speaker 1 (01:10:12):
There's no better way to start your Sunday. It's the
Sunday Session with Francesca Rutkin and Wig Girls for the
best selection of great breathes, news Talk sat be.

Speaker 2 (01:10:24):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:10:24):
I'm very excited about Erin O'Hara's topic today because last weekend,
after hiking and Mount Aspiring National Park for a couple
of days, eleven of us stopped at the Secret Sauna
on Lake Harware where we had an hour in the
sauna and basically we saunted for ten to fifteen minutes,
and then we ran down and dived into the lake
and then got back in the sauna. And we did
this about three or four times and it felt amazing.

(01:10:48):
I'm not big on saunas. I don't really sawn it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:50):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:10:50):
At first I felt very claustrophobic and I sort of
struggled to breathe. More I did it than I got
used to it. And of course you've got this view
up Lake Haware, one of the best views, one of
the best places to sauna in the world. It was
absolutely amazing, and I was like, I feel really good,
but I kind of didn't understand why, and I have
absolutely no no idea whether this hot cold business is
actually any good for us. And then erancies, I think

(01:11:12):
today we'll talk about Viking wellness, So I'm excited to
know what was going on and whether it really was
any good for me or not.

Speaker 18 (01:11:18):
Welcome, good morning. Yeah, Viking wellness is a real hit
thing at the moment, with experiences where you can travel
and do these Viking experiences, which one of the big
key components of Viking wellness is actually your contrast therapy,
which is your hot cold and actually having that experience
of going from the hot sauna and then into actually

(01:11:40):
really icy cold water, so not just a cold water,
but usually it would be icy in the way they
do it in the Nordic tradition, would be even making
a hole in the ice and then hopping into the
cold water, so we're talking about freezing cold water. And
then the other components of the Viking wellness is it's
often paired with nature based practices for things like barefoot walking,

(01:12:02):
sea swimming, forest bathing, and outdoor forest gymming.

Speaker 3 (01:12:06):
I did some forest bathing as well, because at one
point coming down from Crucible Lake, I was absolutely exhausted
and I just lay down a little bit of moss.

Speaker 18 (01:12:14):
The research on it is an amazing trees. Oh, it's
that green therapy of actually getting out and being a
nature And I think this has become such a really
popular activity to do is because we're so in the
modern day life connected and on devices, on computers, and
actually we don't connect enough in nature and actually have

(01:12:36):
that sort of just nature experience. So that's really what
Viking wellness is really about. And there's so many health
benefits to it, and it's looking at the contrast. Therapy
is amazing for improving circulation, reducing inflammation, reducing stress. Also,
the other thing I've seen in my clinic is some
of my diabetic patients have used it for regulating in

(01:12:57):
some levels and it has been amazing, and sometimes it's
not about taking heaps of supplements and just diet, but
actually the cold therapy can be such a big benefit
for improving insign regulation but also connecting with nature. It's
great for mental health as well, because when you are
going in those cold, icy waters, it's actually a little
bit stressful for the body, but actually allows you to

(01:13:19):
build up your mental strength as well as compact fatigue
because you're actually going to improve circulations with the whole body.

Speaker 3 (01:13:28):
Like Crucible did have icebergs in it, or you could
swimm it with icebergs. I kind of waited in it,
to be honest with you, it was a little chilly
for me.

Speaker 18 (01:13:35):
Well there, real cold water is actually the real benefit.
But that's where you also need to be cautious if
you're new to this type of therapy, especially if you
have a heart condition, is that you want to be
a bit mindful when you start out, because obviously going
from extremities of extreme hot and then extreme cold is
going to change things like your blood pressure. So being
really mindful if you do have a heart condition and

(01:13:57):
build up slowly, so don't kind of leap into being
like I'm going to set the record for the highest
amount of time and the sauda and then highest amount
of time in the cold water, because actually it's not
about that. It's about listening to your body still when
you do do these therapies. The other big part of
the Viking unness is actually the Viking diet, which I
did a bit of research on this because I was like,
what is the Viking diet? But it's actually a little

(01:14:19):
bit more like the Mediterranean diet, but does have a
little bit more emphasis on eating more things in nature,
So there's a bit more meat focus on a Viking diet,
and the meat that includes even things like horse and
geese and seafood like whale and seal meat, which I
was like, oh my goodness, that's extreme, so probably not

(01:14:40):
for the mainstream person. The other big component of a
Viking diet is actually beer and meat, which is honey
based for men to drink. So it's a little bit
alcoholic because it actually was used in the Viking times
because there was the lack of clean water, so obviously
when they ferment it, it's actually helping get rid of
any bugs. So it's looking at like those certain factors

(01:15:03):
of more meat and alcohol but mine, I feel not
probably the best for your overall health if you're drinking
too much. Also sodiums another part that is actually quite
high because there's a little bit more preserving that goes
on in this Viking diet too.

Speaker 3 (01:15:17):
Would have had a text with someone who said that
they're cardiologists. They're quite interested in the cold plunge type experiences.
But they said their cardiologists said, don't do it because
they've gotten a regular heartbeat. And that's what you were saying, right,
So it is probably something if you've got a couple
of health concerns, maybe do check with your doctor before
you launch into it. But it is quite difficult to
do here in New Zealand. I mean Lake hard where
I was with a bunch of queen centers. They were like, oh,

(01:15:38):
it's freezing. I'm like, it's not. I don't even think
it was as cold as Lake Topaul was this summer.
I found that quite warm but still refreshing. Am I
going to get the benefit from that?

Speaker 18 (01:15:47):
You'll still get the benefit of the cold water, but
the colder the better. And I think going into the
winter months, if you're going if you live in the
bottom of the South Island, Queenstown, Wonica, anywhere around there. Yeah,
jump in the lake. It's going to be cold enough
for your cold experience.

Speaker 3 (01:16:00):
That was my problem. I came home and went, I'd
love to do saunas, but I need the lake to
jump into. So yeah, it's a little tricky. And that's
where is the whole experience.

Speaker 18 (01:16:09):
Yeah, and that's where there is that accessibility ashur for
a modern day person who lives in a city. Because
you've got sauna and then if you're going to have
an ice bath as well, there's a big expense of
either buying them for your house or going and doing
it at a facility that offers these sorts of treatments.
Is that there is a cost barrier to it. But
if you don't have that, like maybe this winter swim

(01:16:30):
of the ocean, if you can, it's still going to
be cold and still give you a bit of a
health benefit from since cold water swimming as well.

Speaker 3 (01:16:36):
I love the old cold water swim. Thank you so much.
Erin really good to talk to you about this. It
is six to eleven.

Speaker 1 (01:16:43):
The Sunday Session Full Show podcast on iHeartRadio powered by News.

Speaker 2 (01:16:48):
Talks at b.

Speaker 10 (01:16:51):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:16:52):
Fiona Samuels has been telling New Zealand stories for decades now,
first as an actor, then writer, director and producer. She's
worked across TV, film and theater, bringing to life dramas
and documentaries. She's worked with the best in the industry
and has been all ordered numerous times for her work.
In twenty twelve, Samuel was named in Arts Foundation Laureate
and in the twenty nineteen New Years on As she

(01:17:13):
became a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit
for services to Television and Theater. She has a new
play launching on April seventh. It's called Helen Clark in
Six Outfits and Fiona Samuel is going to be with
us next. Going to finish off with a little bit
o Stevie Nicks. Apparently Lindsey Buckingham has hinted at a

(01:17:35):
reunion with Stevie Nicks. So they are. They're reconciled following
a fuel a feud. So here we go and during
we're back shortly.

Speaker 12 (01:17:49):
Stout well lass last damn lad please day.

Speaker 2 (01:18:04):
It's Sunday. You know what that means.

Speaker 1 (01:18:06):
It's the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin and Wickles for
the best election of Great Reads, US talk.

Speaker 2 (01:18:13):
Set be Righty.

Speaker 3 (01:18:27):
Coming up this hour on the Sunday Session, Pinney covers
off a big weekend for the All Whites, Joan has
the latest historical novel from Kate Thompson, and Meghan tells
us how to secure the best hotel prices.

Speaker 2 (01:18:40):
The Sunday Session, a.

Speaker 3 (01:18:42):
Witty play about one of our former prime ministers is
about to hit theaters for its world premiere. Helen Clark
and Six Outfits as a satire telling the life story
of the former labor leader and prime ministers through the
lens of six key outfits. The show was written by
award winning playwright Fiona Samuel. The premiers in Auckland and
just over a week and Fiona is with me now,

(01:19:02):
good morning, lovely to have you with us, Thank you.
You were coached by Auckland Theater Company Artistic director Jonathan
Bileski with a two word brief. He said to you,
Helen Clark, now, what do you do with that? What
was your reaction? Exactly?

Speaker 19 (01:19:18):
My reaction was my mouth was a little bit open.
I was catching flies and I was thinking this could
go a million different ways. This does not feel like
a simple proposition. I really appreciated the fact that he
wasn't telling me what kind of play about Helen Clark

(01:19:39):
he wanted. That was great, But then I had to
I thought, Okay, I've got to figure this out for myself,
and the first question is to find my way into
this maze. Because there are many ways in and many
ways out. Every decision leads to another decision. So when

(01:19:59):
you feel completely in the dark, like I did, the
only thing to do is well, I decided to gather information.
I thought, I need a lot more facts. And then
when I've got a big mountain of facts, I'm gonna
find out if there's a way that I can tunnel
into that mountain.

Speaker 3 (01:20:19):
Because Helen Clark feels like quite an intimidating figure to
make a play.

Speaker 19 (01:20:23):
Well, you don't want to get stuff wrong by accident,
let's put it that way. I think there is a
way in which you might get things wrong on purpose.
I didn't set out to get things wrong on purpose,
because I thought, why would you do that, You know,
give a deliberately misleading impression or portrayal of a person.

Speaker 3 (01:20:43):
But I did set out to be.

Speaker 19 (01:20:46):
Somewhat provocative and mischievous in that I thought It's not
my job to receive the dominant narrative, like whether it's
the media's narrative, or whether it's her friends and colleagues,
or whether it's her own narrative. It's not my job
just to replicate the story as someone else would tell it.

(01:21:09):
It's my job to find the story as I would
tell it.

Speaker 3 (01:21:13):
So how do you do that?

Speaker 19 (01:21:15):
Oh, you're asking all the hard questions. This morning, after
I had gathered the facts I her was kind of
like throwing jelly at the wall and seeing what six
I thought of all this mountain of information that I've accumulated,
What are the things that stand out to me? What

(01:21:38):
are the things that make this story distinctive and crunchy?
Because you know, it's got to be a drama. I
always thought that it would be funny, and that I
wanted it to be funny. That was a strong part
of my instinctive feeling about the tone of the play,
which is different from the story or you know, the approach,
how you're actually going to put it in the space.

(01:22:00):
I did know that there was going to be humor
in it, but I thought humor alone won't get you
through an evening in the theater, You've got to have
some substance, and so what is the substance here? What
are the moments? What are the other characters? What are
the moments? Like if I was writing this as a movie,
what are the key scenes? What stays in my mind?

(01:22:23):
And sometimes I call them trailer moments. You think, if
this was a movie and there was a trailer of
this movie, what are the moments that you would need
to see in the trailer to make you go ah,
I get the feeling of what this story is. So
I started to home in on those kinds of things.
But it really wasn't until I had the idea about
the clothes that it fell into place.

Speaker 3 (01:22:45):
Which makes a huge amount of sense sense because there
was just such a commentary on her clothes and his appearance,
and speculation about sexuality and things like that, all of
that that only a female politician would do.

Speaker 19 (01:23:00):
That that's right, And I thought, nowadays, we've got terminology
for that, Like it's actually in the play that she
got the liners. You got sledged for your inadequate performance
of gender. This is what the younger Helen Clark says
to the older Helen Clark, and the older Helen Clark
just says, you don't know those words yet, because when

(01:23:22):
she started out, nobody would have put it in that way.
But that is what happened to her. It's like, there's
a certain way that you meant to play this role
called woman or female politician, and you're not doing it right.
She got told that constantly, you are not doing it right.

(01:23:42):
And yet she was ah super capable, very effective politician,
one of our best in my personal opinion. But none
of the conversation was about that.

Speaker 3 (01:23:56):
You say she didn't have the words for it. We
do have the words for it now. But do you
think it has changed it or when it comes to
women in public roles.

Speaker 19 (01:24:04):
Well, I'd like to think so, but I look at
the evidence and I say no. I think there is
still a massive amount of completely unnecessary commentary on things
that have nothing to do with the job in hand,
nothing to do with it at all. And all you
have to do is flip the picture and go Are

(01:24:24):
the men being asked about that?

Speaker 3 (01:24:26):
Are they being asked.

Speaker 19 (01:24:28):
About their hair, about their clothes, about their marriages, about
their children, about their mental health, about their addictions? Of
you know that they're not and they can and do
mess up quite spectacularly on the daily extraordinary things that
women would be crucified for. And it's like there's some

(01:24:51):
kind of get out of jail free card, which is
that there men And.

Speaker 7 (01:24:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 19 (01:24:59):
So while I would like to think it was equal
opportunity to stuff up, I think we.

Speaker 3 (01:25:06):
All know that it's not. Have you talked to Helen Clark?
Does she know that this play is happening.

Speaker 19 (01:25:12):
Yes, she does know that this play is happening, And
yes I have talked to her. But I held off
until very late in the process. I held off until
I'd actually completed the writing of the script because I
wanted to keep my approach pure, because I knew that

(01:25:35):
it wasn't a documentary, it wasn't simply a fact finding mission.
I felt like I'd already done the fact finding mission
part of the process in doing all my background reading.
And I did think if, in the process of speaking
with Helen, I'm thinking that there are factual errors in
what I've done, of course I'll change them. I'm not

(01:25:57):
going to stick to my guns in the face of
superior evidence, But neither do I have an obligation to
reflect her own take on her journey.

Speaker 3 (01:26:10):
How did she take it. I mean it must be.
It must be quite daunting for her to know that
there is a play being written about her.

Speaker 12 (01:26:18):
I think so.

Speaker 19 (01:26:19):
I mean I can if I put myself in those shoes,
I think, holy smoke, I think I would take a
very standing, quite a long way back approach to it.
I think that's what Helen was doing, certainly initially that

(01:26:40):
she was aware of it. She knew it was happening,
but never attempted to have any kind of editorial control.
And she's smart, you know, she's smart in very many ways.
But she's also smart about you know, what art is,
what theater is. She will know that it's a take.
It's not definitive, it's not the last word, it's not

(01:27:03):
an Encyclopedia entry. It is a piece of theater. And
I think possibly of all of our former prime ministers,
she would have a better understanding of that than anyone.

Speaker 14 (01:27:13):
Now.

Speaker 3 (01:27:14):
I'm sure she'll be very pleased at Jennifer Woodland is
playing her as the adult Helen. I can't wait to
see her in this role. You've made a bit of
a habit of basing your work around real life's people
and stories. Is there a particular draw for you to that.

Speaker 19 (01:27:34):
Often it's not something that I set out to do,
like I'll never say, Okay, now I'm casting around for
another real life story that I might tell. What hooks
you in a story is, oh, it's a bit of
a mystery, and it's one that I never want to
probe too closely. But it has to be that there
are questions that you want to answer. It feels substantial

(01:27:58):
to you. It feels like something you might spend several
years of your life on because often that's what it
turns out to be. And maybe two as I crack
on that, just the shape of a life becomes increasingly fascinating.
Almost any life. I think, if you dug into this,

(01:28:19):
where do you find the turning points? Where do you
find the decisive moments? Where do you find the formative experiences?
What is it that makes this person who they are?
And where are the moments where it might have gone differently,
you know, the sliding door moments. Those were very Those
questions were uppermost in my mind on Pike River a

(01:28:42):
lot of the time because with Anna Osborne and Sonya Rockhouse,
the two real life heroines of the Pike River Story
as it was told in the film. They would constantly say,
we're just ordinary people. We just did what anyone would
have done. But from a dramatist's perspective, that's that's so

(01:29:03):
not true. They did what very few people would have done.

Speaker 3 (01:29:08):
Last year was a big gear for you, as you say,
Pike River, the screenplay that you wrote, that the film
was released, this play was announced, you won the cat
On Mansfield ment On fellowship. Is this the nature of
being in the arts? It's sort of all or nothing
at times?

Speaker 19 (01:29:27):
Very much so. It's not a smooth ride. It's incredibly unpredictable,
and it's incredibly uncertain, ridiculously so. At any given time,
there are so many things you don't know about how
your year is going to unfold. You don't necessarily know
where you're going to be living, You don't know how
much money you're going to have. You don't know which

(01:29:49):
of the six possible projects that you've got on the
go is going to move forward and which ones are
going to fall over. And there've been years when they
all fall over and nobody knows about those ones because
there's nothing to tell. But yeah, some days you wake
up and you think, what a mug's game? So you're right.
Last year was a very good year, but they're not

(01:30:10):
all like that. Is writing where you're most happy you
do everything? Yeah, but is writing where you kind of
I do love it. It feels like a very natural
place for me to be. I also love directing, and
the combo of writing and then directing that's a great one,

(01:30:33):
that's deeply satisfying. That said, I think writing is a
very natural place for me to be. And when it's directing,
I think, Okay, you've got to get up on your
hind legs for this. You know, you've got to summon
your energy, you've got to crank up your metabolic rate.
You've got to go into action mode and contemplation mode

(01:30:56):
and swimming around in the unknown mode is a more
natural fit for me. But I can do action, and
when you do it, it's very stimulating.

Speaker 7 (01:31:05):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:31:05):
When you do it, I go, oh, I.

Speaker 19 (01:31:07):
Want more of that, and then I sink back into
my happy place.

Speaker 3 (01:31:12):
And you'll be sinking back into some contemplation. I imagine when
you head to the South of France, when do you
take up that fellowship.

Speaker 19 (01:31:19):
I'm leaving New Zealand on the thirtieth of April.

Speaker 3 (01:31:22):
Fantastic, just in time for winter, skipping off almost.

Speaker 19 (01:31:25):
Yes, skipping the New Zealand winter and arriving in the
French spring.

Speaker 3 (01:31:29):
Brilliant. And what is the plan for your time there?

Speaker 19 (01:31:32):
Well, I'm working on another stage work. It's a stage
adaptation of recent New Zealand book, very powerful and fascinating book.
I'm keeping the lid on my pot pretty much. They're
not letting them escape. But you know, having gone back
into the world of stage with Helen Class after spending

(01:31:55):
a long time in the world of film and television,
I'm really alive to the possibilities of stage, of live performance,
particularly now in this You know, we spend so much
of our life on screens, and I love the on
screen entertainment as much as anybody else. But there is
a particular charge that only comes from a bunch of

(01:32:18):
people sitting in a room and the lights go down
and the lights come up on the special arena that
is the stage, and that thrill of what's going to happen,
whatever it is, it's going to unfold in front of me,
and a real life human is going to do it
in front of me. That that charge, I'm newly in
love with. That all over again.

Speaker 3 (01:32:38):
That is brilliant And look just really quickly having Clark's
six outfits? Did you know which ones they'd be? Did
you have them in the back of your mind?

Speaker 19 (01:32:45):
That was That was part of the fun, having a
massed all the information. And then when I did that
bit of going Okay, what sticks, what are the key scenes?
What am I feeling? And then I put on the
glasses of the clothes and thought, okay, not talking now
about key moments, but thinking key outfits. What outfits am

(01:33:06):
I seeing? Ah, they almost chose themselves. There we go,
and then I knew it was game on.

Speaker 3 (01:33:13):
I love it. Thank you so much. Helen Clark in
Six Outfits is on at Auckland's ASB Waterfront Theater from
April seventh to the twenty sixth. For tickets and more information,
head to ATC dot co dot in z. Fiona, thank
you so much for coming in love you to talk
to you too. It is twenty two past eleven.

Speaker 6 (01:33:36):
Grab a cover.

Speaker 1 (01:33:37):
It's the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudgin and Wiggles for
the best selection of used talk ZEDB.

Speaker 3 (01:33:44):
It is time for the panel and I'm joined by
Newstalk z B Wellington Morning's host Nick Mills, Good morning, Nick,
Good morning, and broadcaster and journalist Willemina o'keef. How are
you doing, Willemina, good morning. Good to have you both
with us.

Speaker 2 (01:33:57):
Hey.

Speaker 3 (01:33:58):
I started the show this morning by saying that I
thought that it's election year and Labor mister trick this
week by not fronting on an issue which they claimed
to be at the heart of all the decisions they're
going to make if they come into power, which is affordability.
They didn't want to talk about coming up with a
solution to the fuel crisis that we're facing. Then there
was also the COVID vaccine debacle. Does this make it

(01:34:18):
harder to move away from the negative legacy that we
have of Hipkins and his leadership role through COVID?

Speaker 6 (01:34:23):
Nick, I think that I've come up with a plan.
Their plan is to say nothing, do nothing right up
to the election and let the coalition self destruct. That's
what I think their theory is. I had Christopher Perkins
on the show in the studio face to face this week,
and I know him reasonably well from spending a bit
of time in the studio with him over the years.

(01:34:46):
I thought he was I don't want to say broken,
but he's definitely beaten up. And I think that it's
just one thing after another after another, and it feels
like he needs time out, he needs a breath. That said, yes,
they did mis abeat.

Speaker 3 (01:35:03):
Why does he feel that? I mean, I know there's
been some difficult personal shoes. That's none of my business.
I'mwhat interested in that, but why does he feel that way?
I mean, I don't mean to be rude, but he's
not in government, he's in opposition. It was, you know,
just a few things to address and face. Yeah, I
considering what they've been through, I'm kind of a bit

(01:35:23):
perpexed as to how he's got that.

Speaker 6 (01:35:27):
My take on as I'm a people's person speak, that's
my job, and I kind of just got a vibe
from the minute he walked in. And we have a
good relationship. It's not antike miss and to submiss it.
We don't fight, We get on well. So it just
felt like he needed time out. That's what I fell
like to me, Oh, no.

Speaker 3 (01:35:45):
Well, fair enough, and look, we want everybody to be well,
don't we. Wilhelmina, what are your thoughts? You think they
must have beat this week?

Speaker 12 (01:35:55):
Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 20 (01:35:56):
I feel like when big things, big crises happen, this
is really the opportunity to really step up and sway voters.
That's when you can actually sway Is back into the
labor camp. Obviously, like you said, it's not been a
great run for him lately. Obviously, part of his job
is fronting up on harder issues. But I guess when
the things start getting laid into the personal that's when
it does really start to wear you down. So I

(01:36:16):
can kind of understand. I guess why he was probably
feeling a bit rough around the edges. As soon as
it gets into that personal territory, that's when I think
it becomes really really tough. I think, you know, we
kind of sort of talking about, you know, would there
be an alternative to Hipkins. I don't really think that
there's a dramatically strong alternative in the wings potentially to
shake things up. I feel like the leadership is just

(01:36:40):
part of the equation. I think the narrative runs a
lot deeper, and that the entire party sort of needs
to redefine its approach. And I don't think putting someone
else in his position would automatically fix the underlying problem.
It could just be one and one out with the
same problems. I think they actually need to readjust their
entire strategy.

Speaker 3 (01:36:58):
Well, that's the bigger problem that they're facing. I think
that you've hit the nail on the head. They will
the mean or it's not necessarily just what's taken place
over the last week is that there's no one ready
to step up and take on the role as the
lead the party.

Speaker 12 (01:37:11):
One hundred percent.

Speaker 20 (01:37:12):
I mean, if you look at the contenders, that the
most obvious would probably be Kiaren McNulty. He's a strong communicator,
but probably lacks the leadership experience. Then there's maybe Megan Woods,
but I think she probably lacks a personality and the
charisma required for that role. You could consider Willow Jene
Prime maybe, but again the lack of experience comes into play.
And all in all, they just don't think that their
approach or their entire vision would be significantly different to Hitkins.

(01:37:34):
It would just be a one in, one out and
sailing the same ship expecting a different results. What is
it doing the same thing and expecting a different results.

Speaker 6 (01:37:45):
Let's look at it really, I mean, there is nobody
apart from Kieren mcinolty. He says he doesn't want the job.
But you look at the I mean the Carmel Sepuani.
It just goes on and on. But I did see.
I was very impressed by a lady called Vanisha Walters
on Q and A this morning. She's a labor in
p I was really really impressed with her. You know,

(01:38:07):
someone that could come through. There's nobody. There is nobody
then could even replace Hipkins, apart from Garen macnoli, who
doesn't want a job that would even slightly tilt the cider.

Speaker 3 (01:38:21):
I didn't expect Hipkins to come up with the policy
on the fly and to come up with all the
solutions for the fuel crisis. I wanted them to sort
of maybe suggest that they were looking at it and
thinking about it and would have some suggestions to make.
Only because the thing that really irks me will I
meanor is when MP's are in opposition and they just
sit there and they do performative politics. There's a bit

(01:38:42):
of performing in the house, bit of perform performing to
the media, and they're not a lot of holses going
on behind the scenes. And I think Erica Stanford has
really stood it out in because she came into her
portfolio of education. She'd spent that time in opposition working
out what she wanted to do, how she was going
to do it, and she hit the ground running and
you start seeing the results and you go, oh, yeah,

(01:39:04):
that's what you should be doing in opposition. And I
think it just me because it felt like, no, we're
in opposition. I don't need to do any of that work. Yeah,
you know. And I don't know why that irks men.
I just I'm like, we're not paying you to sit
there and you know, throw a few snappy questions out
in the house, expect you to be on top of
all this as well.

Speaker 12 (01:39:20):
Oh one hundred percent.

Speaker 20 (01:39:21):
And I feel like the worst thing is when the
opposition is just dushing out criticism after criticism after criticism
without any proper solution. I feel like it's it's not
it's not a great approach. It's it's a real missed opportunity.
And like you say, I feel like Nicholelis has really
really stepped up. I think she's dotted her eyes, she's
crossed her tees, and meanwhile Labor's throwing out criticisms which
aren't really adding up. And when you look at the

(01:39:44):
criticism of how he was talking. Capkins was talking about
the government's GST tap. The math just wasn't really mathing there,
and so he kind of came out with this big
claim and didn't really have the numbers actually to back
it up, and so it makes him look silly.

Speaker 3 (01:39:55):
I think, Nick, how's your public transport?

Speaker 6 (01:39:59):
Can I just add a quick one there? The other
king was there was no winner in this, There was
no If he came out with another plan, that was
just another answer for another fight. You know what I mean?
There is no winner right now. Isn't he better off
to say nothing? You know what I'm saying. We don't
know what's going to happen tomorrow.

Speaker 12 (01:40:15):
We know the.

Speaker 6 (01:40:16):
Petrol's going up. We know there isn't anything that they
could do that was going to flex.

Speaker 3 (01:40:19):
The Problemy and I suppose all we can do, Nick
is judge you by how you've handled crisis in the past.
And I'm not so sure that that's a good that's
so good for labor. That's the point I'm trying to
make right hate Nick, how is you know what I mean?
How has your public transport in Wellington? Would you jump
on public transport? If it was, if it was.

Speaker 6 (01:40:37):
Free, Nick, I hate my public transport, but I'd love
to use it. Get me right, But hold on, I
did some work on this because I'm thinking about doing
it as an hour tomorrow.

Speaker 7 (01:40:46):
Do you realize?

Speaker 6 (01:40:47):
And I'm not a mathematician, and I could get this wrong,
but in twenty twenty two, I think that when the
labor gouvern were in whenever they went to half price
fairs during all after COVID or during COVID period, but
they reckon that was costing them three hundred and twenty
million a year. So if we had so, if sorry
it was yes, So if we actually went to for
a full year of no fares for public transport, the

(01:41:12):
costs wouldn't be that much greater than what they're actually
what they're bushing out now to everybody. And when you
think about it, it's appealing to the right people again,
because it's people that need to use the transport to
get to work, to get the kids to school, and
the same thing. I would have thought that was a
more simplistic idea.

Speaker 3 (01:41:28):
Rather than the targeted fifty dollar fuel.

Speaker 6 (01:41:31):
Yeah, that's why I think we should be looking at
it a bit stronger.

Speaker 3 (01:41:35):
What about you, Wilhelmina, does it look look?

Speaker 20 (01:41:39):
I have to admit I haven't really caught much public
transport locally in New Zealand since I was about about university,
which I feel shameful to admit. But the fact of
the matter is it's pretty unreliable. I feel like the
frequency at which buses arrive. I mean I live on
the north Shore, so it is a little bit more
niggly to get over the bridge. I also feel like

(01:42:00):
rail is just not really a thing, whereas whenever I
go overseas, public transport is the thing. It is so reliable, trains,
buses every two to three minutes. So I feel like
the concept of a free private transport that's great, but
you actually need to have the resources and the services.

Speaker 12 (01:42:14):
To be able to cater to it.

Speaker 20 (01:42:16):
I mean, some of the buses they also see in
the morning down the transit lane, they are full to
the brim. At the moment you make it free, more
people hop on board. Do we have the services to
cater to it and that still needs to be a
reliable service?

Speaker 3 (01:42:26):
Toe Yeah, absolutely. I mean it's never going to work
for everybody, is it. But it might just also have
appealed to a broad range of people who looking for
a little bit of help with the fuel costs. Well,
I mean Okeith and Nick Mills. Thank you very much
for your time this morning. Appreciated. It is twenty five
to twelve.

Speaker 1 (01:42:48):
It's the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin on News Talks
at BLA.

Speaker 3 (01:43:10):
Coming up at mid day it is Jason Pine with
Weekend Spoke. Good morning, Good morning. Okay, So we're in
the middle of this sort of FIFA series, these warm
up matches for the All Whites. How they're looking well.

Speaker 21 (01:43:23):
On Friday night, I was a bit disappointed, actually, particularly
with the first half against Finland. They lost the game
to nil. It just seemed to me to be a
really good opportunity for them to come out and really
sort of say, hey, we're ready for this World Cup,
almost a dress rehearsal of sorts, because they played Finland.
As I say, Friday, They've got Chili tomorrow night, a
couple of games in four or five days, which is

(01:43:44):
what they'll face at the World Cup. For whatever reason,
they did were just a bit flat in the first half.
They even admitted it themselves afterwards and also said they
didn't really understand why they couldn't really put their finger
on why they came out a little bit listless and
lethargic in the first half. It was better on the
second half, and a couple of players introduced into the
team certainly made a difference. Jesse Randall from Auckland f

(01:44:05):
C came on at a really good half. But yeah,
they'll want to turn things around against Chili tomorrow. And
I've got a couple of the players in studio actually
this afternoon, Ben Wayne and Ben Old, the two bends
are coming in, so that'll be interesting for me to
navigate asking a question of each of the two bends alternatively.
But they are an after one o'clock on weekend sport.

Speaker 3 (01:44:23):
That's why we have surnames.

Speaker 21 (01:44:25):
That's true and nicknames. Do you know what Ben Old's nicknamers?

Speaker 14 (01:44:27):
No?

Speaker 21 (01:44:28):
I don't, Oldie. Do you know what Ben Wayne's guests?
Do you know what Ben Wayne's nickname is? Wayney Way?

Speaker 14 (01:44:32):
No?

Speaker 3 (01:44:33):
Oh Way, No, there we go.

Speaker 15 (01:44:34):
You almost had it.

Speaker 3 (01:44:35):
I almost had it. And well it sounds like it's
a good it's good that we've got this little series.
Then to get them organized, I mean, we don't have
our full team or anything yet do we But it's
good to kind of, you know, yeah, get together as
a team.

Speaker 21 (01:44:45):
I think so, I think so, I mean I actually
have these games, yes, exactly, You're right. And there's about
four or five senior guys who will go to the
World Cup who aren't there, so you've got to take
that into account too.

Speaker 3 (01:44:52):
Okay, am I imagining it? Or in the Super Rugby
this year, are we just getting really high score lines?
I'm loving it, yeah, because it means his action is
a lot going on.

Speaker 21 (01:45:02):
Well, the Hurricanes yesterday scored fifty plus for the fourth
time and six game yea, the bluespot forty on the drawer,
but tighter out in Perth twenty four to fourteen chiefs
against the Force, so that one was a bit tighter.
But yeah, I think teams are running the ball, aren't they.
And as you say, they've always said in Super Rugby
that they want entertainment to bring the fans back and
all that sort of thing. Those up in the Northern Hemisphere,

(01:45:23):
I'm sure are looking down their nose at what's happening
down here.

Speaker 14 (01:45:27):
These games have touched rugby. Where's the set piece, where's
the where's the hard grunt? And the grind amongst the forwards. Well,
I mean that's there as well, but I'm loving watching
it excellent.

Speaker 3 (01:45:38):
And Liam Lawson's gonna start at fourteenth today the Japanese
Grand Prix, kicking off about six pm tonight. Yeah, I'm
feeling more relaxed. I'm feeling calm about Liam Lawson this year.
I don't know, it just seems to be a little
bit more consistency and it just seems to be coming
together a little bit better with.

Speaker 21 (01:45:57):
You, Yeah, difficulty with us race is very hard to
pass at Suzuka, so fourteenth on the grid means it's
gonna take quite a bit for him to get into
the points top ten. But yeah, I think he's getting
the hang of it, although he had had issues during
qualifying yesterday which kind of stymied his progress. But yeah,
we wait to see what happens.

Speaker 3 (01:46:15):
I just need to mention.

Speaker 21 (01:46:16):
So after midday, Jason Ryan's on the show, the assistant
coach of the All Blacks, the only assistant who's been
been retained from the last regime.

Speaker 3 (01:46:23):
Everybody else has been currently employed one.

Speaker 21 (01:46:25):
Well, that's right, that's right, And he was also an
assistant under Ian Foster. So three all Blacks coaches and
four years must be doing something right. But how does
that go in terms of a dynamic moving from one
coaching group to another. Looking forward to Jason Ryan after.

Speaker 3 (01:46:38):
Midday, fantastic sounds good, Piney, We'll be joining you. Jason
pine will be with you at midday.

Speaker 1 (01:46:43):
The Sunday Session Full show podcast on iHeartRadio powered by
News Talks at b.

Speaker 3 (01:46:49):
It is time to talk travel and we're joined by
Meghan Singleton, blogger at large dot com.

Speaker 12 (01:46:53):
Good morning, Good morning.

Speaker 3 (01:46:55):
Okay, so you are about to head off to New
York and you had a bit of a play around,
you know, booking hotel rooms and things, and.

Speaker 17 (01:47:05):
You just sick.

Speaker 3 (01:47:06):
You just discovered the best way to grab a great
hotel price talk.

Speaker 12 (01:47:10):
Us through absolutely.

Speaker 22 (01:47:12):
So this is a tip that you could use for
any hotel anywhere. I'm using it for Easter weekend, and
so that might actually be working to my favor, but
I am about to save hundreds of dollars on my
stay in New York City. So what I've done was
like last year, whenever I first booked it, I went
to booking dot com and I selected the hotel that

(01:47:35):
I wanted and it was you know, mid price, mid
to lower price, but still nice like a four star
three four star hotel.

Speaker 12 (01:47:43):
Lock that in. Happy with the price.

Speaker 22 (01:47:44):
I think it's going to be about nineteen hundred New
Zealand dollars for three nights, right, but that's what you
have to pay. So I but I got a refundable
and this is the only way it will work. I
went to booking dot com and I chose a refundable room.
So I've got until the first of April. So so
I've got an alert on my phone to lock.

Speaker 12 (01:48:03):
That in or cancel for no fee.

Speaker 22 (01:48:06):
So every day I've been refreshing about seven hotels that
I quite like the look of, including this same one.
And as of this morning, my latest refresh has gone
down that very same room, a big kinning sized room,
to fourteen hundred and two dollars.

Speaker 12 (01:48:19):
That's a saving of five hundred and thirty dollars.

Speaker 22 (01:48:22):
Now, how I take advantage of that is because you
don't just get that. I now need to go in
back into that hotel, book that room for fourteen oh
two and then go to booking dot com and cancel
my previous booking. Now, hoteliers don't want us to know
this they hate this. However, it is available. You do
pay for a non refundable ballroom about maybe one hundred

(01:48:44):
dollars more than if you just bought it and paid
for it on the day. But of course I'm going
next weekend, so I'm ready to pay in cash today
and that's no problem, and especially if I'm saving five
or six hundred dollars.

Speaker 3 (01:48:55):
Okay, So you go in, you book the refundable room,
and then closer to the time you book a non
that when you find a great deal, it's a non
refundable room, and that gives you never that gives you
the best cheapest price possible.

Speaker 22 (01:49:13):
Well, it's not even about the nonrefundables, because I could
still buy another room today that won't be payable until
the second and that is still about five hundred dollars
cheap or four hundred dollars cheap.

Speaker 12 (01:49:24):
Although then I'm.

Speaker 22 (01:49:25):
Going, well, maybe there's a posh hotel I might like
if I'm going to have that sort of budget, and
I might just upgrade myself, so you know, take that option.
But at least I've got my sort of placeholder, as
it were, And I was happy with that when I
first booked it. But Honestly, I'm watching these prices. I've
been watching them all week. Come down on about seven
of them. I'm just refreshing daily and the savings huge,

(01:49:48):
So it's a really good tip.

Speaker 3 (01:49:49):
And Meghan, did you do both those bookings on booking
dot Com?

Speaker 2 (01:49:52):
Yeah?

Speaker 12 (01:49:53):
I can't.

Speaker 22 (01:49:54):
Yeah, definitely, Well I could put to be honest, no,
if I'm ready to pay in cash, I could go
straight to the hotel.

Speaker 12 (01:50:00):
But again, compare.

Speaker 22 (01:50:01):
Sometimes the hotel price isn't cheaper than these online booking agents,
so it is worth comparing, opening all your tabs and
have all double check.

Speaker 12 (01:50:10):
But this is just what I've noticed the trend this week.
That's insane.

Speaker 3 (01:50:13):
Isn't that interesting? So you are, So that's all sorted.
You've done that, You've given yourself a good cup of
the days. It's not a really close crossover, and it's
a bit touch and go.

Speaker 12 (01:50:23):
No, I'm going direct.

Speaker 22 (01:50:25):
And that's another thing because I'm meeting the rest of
my group next Tuesday down in DC, and I was
awake from three am Francesca thinking about them all because
they're transiting through from Los Angeles or Houston or wherever
they're coming, and I don't know their turnaround times.

Speaker 12 (01:50:41):
To get their domestic flights.

Speaker 22 (01:50:43):
So that's where your mpc app is going to be
very very important to try and get through the customs
lines at least they're not. Yeah, well then they've got
to go through and go through security and they're domestic.
Oh a bit worried to be honest, but I won't
hopefully that none of them are listening right now.

Speaker 3 (01:50:59):
Well, look, we're going to cross our fingers and we
look forward to you know, getting a catch up in
a week or two. Thank you so much, Megan. That's fantastic.
It is twelve to twelve Books.

Speaker 1 (01:51:10):
With Witkeles for the Best Election of Great Reads.

Speaker 3 (01:51:14):
Book manager at Wickles, Joan mackenzie is with us now.
Good morning, good morning, and we've got a book by
Liz Nugent. It's called The Truth About Ruby Cooper.

Speaker 23 (01:51:22):
Have you read this Nugent before?

Speaker 3 (01:51:23):
I don't think I have, Ah, you should.

Speaker 23 (01:51:25):
She's an author with a number of books, actually I
think this might be fifth or sixth. I first fell
in love with her with Lying in Wait a few
years ago, and then recently she did something called Strange
Sally Diamond that a lot of people really loved. Anyway,
in this one. Ruby Cooper is sixteen years old and
she lives in Boston with her older sister Erin and
their parents. They live quite conservatively. Their dad's a financier,

(01:51:49):
but he's also the pastor of a church which he founded.
And then one day something happens in their home which
has a traumatic effect on all of them and as
a result, they all take sides and decide where their
allegiances really lie and really clever, and I found quite
unsettling thing about this book is the moral ambiguity that
you have to navigate your way through. Ruby's mum is

(01:52:11):
Irish and she picks up Ruby and they head off
to Dublin, while Erin and her dad stay back to
try and pick up the pieces after what's happened. But
everyone's really damaged, and if you couple that with some
truly unreliable narrators, it makes for some really good shocking
twists and turns, which are always great in a book
like this. And you see Ruby's living in Ireland over
the next twenty five years, where the event that took

(01:52:34):
her there traumatizes her well into her adult life. She
has addictions and bad relationships and generally dysfunctional adult life
and meantime back home, there's still disbelief at what happened,
and then suddenly, after all of those years, there's the
possibility of a reckoning.

Speaker 3 (01:52:51):
It's really cleverly done.

Speaker 23 (01:52:53):
The author's made it quite hard to like Ruby, okay,
but she's woven her through the story in such a
clever way that you keep thinking you know what's happened,
and then it changes.

Speaker 3 (01:53:02):
All right, then, okay, sounds interesting.

Speaker 11 (01:53:04):
It's good.

Speaker 3 (01:53:05):
I love the title of Keate Thompson's new book, The
Secret Society of Librarians.

Speaker 12 (01:53:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 23 (01:53:09):
Well, she obviously has a thing about books and libraries
because previously she did The Little Wartime Library, Yes, and
The Wartime Book Club Yes obviously.

Speaker 5 (01:53:18):
No.

Speaker 23 (01:53:19):
Yeah, fond of those books, Oh great, aren't they? This one, obviously,
is also historical fiction, starting in nineteen thirty nine, when
a group of librarians who've met through training and conferences
become determined to keep libraries open during the war. Joyce
is one of them. She's based in London, and she
gets the idea for a mobile library, which was a
newfangled concept back then, to take books to people who

(01:53:41):
can't visit the library anymore. But she has to overcome
some mad bureaucracy before that's able to.

Speaker 3 (01:53:47):
Be able to happen.

Speaker 23 (01:53:48):
And then her friend Derota, also a librarian who lives
in Poland, has been caught in the Nazi roundup of
Jews into a Polish ghetto, and she's determined there to
also find ways to keep a library alive. Kate Thompson,
the authors included quite a long piece at the end
of this book about her reasons for writing it and
the research which she did. And it's really interesting that

(01:54:10):
the events and the stories that she's put in it
are all based on actual events which we're told to
her by women involved at the time, and she used
that to write this fictional story of the lives of
these really courageous women. And I was thinking about it
in these what we refer to as interesting times, and
it made me wonder how brave i'd be if push
came to shove these days and the availability of books

(01:54:32):
was somehow threatened. And you always hope you do your bit,
but you just don't know, do you?

Speaker 3 (01:54:36):
No, you don't, Okay, sounds great. The Secret Society of
Liberians by Kate Thompson was the last book that Joan
spoke About and The Truth About Ruby Cooper by Liz
Nugent was the first book. Thank you so much, See
you next week.

Speaker 1 (01:54:50):
The Sunday Session Full Show podcast on iHeartRadio powered by
News Talks AB.

Speaker 3 (01:54:57):
Thank you so much for joining us this morning on
the Sunday Session. Thank you to Carry for producing the show,
and thank you very much for your text. Somebody text
me to say, is Piney always that happy? Of course
he has. He's got the best job in the world.
He watches and talk sport. We're all we happy that
was our job. So happy. Jason pine is out next
at midday.

Speaker 2 (01:55:17):
Hey.

Speaker 3 (01:55:17):
Next week on the show, Australian comedian and actress Felicity
Ward is going to join me. She's well known for
her role in the Office and Time Bandits. In seven
days anyway, she's heading to New Zealand with her stand
up tour I Wish I Could Come Out of My
Shell brilliant title, which is part of the New Zealand
International Comedy Festival. And we're also going to be talking
about a film called The North, which is like the

(01:55:39):
quintessential hiking film. Ever. Bart Shreither the director of the film.
He's Dutch, but he also was inspired to make the
film after walking the Arolla Trail here in New Zealand.
He's going to be joining us to talk about why
getting out into nature is so transformative and good for us.
Enjoy the rest of your Sunday. Jason Pine up next.

Speaker 1 (01:56:51):
For more from the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin. Listen
live to news Talks it'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.

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