January 29, 2026 • 13 mins
FIRST WITH YESTERDAY'S NEWS (highlights from Thursday on Newstalk ZB) Whacky Weather. Hard Times/Who Wants a Degree Anyway?/D.I.Y. Is Dead/A.I. Apocalypse Update/Not Saucy Enough
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk Said B.
Follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Used Talk Said Talk.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Hello, my beautiful beanies, and welcome to the Bean for Friday.
First with yesterday's news, I am Glen Hart. We're looking
back at Thursday. We discovered that the fees free scheme
definitely didn't work as people had hoped. We've also got
other data suggesting that nobody wants to renovate a home anymore.
(00:47):
They would like to buy what that's already been done.
AI on the Farm and Source on pies. So we'll
finish up, but will begin talking insurance in the wake
of something weird happening with the client climate. Have you
noticed that you noticed that this weird weather.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
So AA has said to Westport that if it's flood
exposure drops below the maximum exposure limit in the future,
if the flood banks, if they believe the flood banks
will do the job of protecting the homes, then they'll
reopen books to new customers. But they're not the first
insurer to stop insuring where they deem the risk is
(01:28):
too great, and they certainly won't be the last. So
as I say, We can argue all we like about
climate change and who's responsible and whether anyone should be
held responsible at or it really doesn't matter because policies
are being drafted, policies are being enacted that take climate
(01:48):
change into account, and whatever we believe where will be
denied insurance paying the increased premiums, reshaping our towns and
communities as a result of what the banks, the insurers
and the council believe.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
That's all well and good, But in the deck of
my mind, I do keep recollecting stories of insurance companies
and banks making record profits. So I wonder if there's
a heavy medium there of some kind. Probably not, I mean,
we must make a record profit every year.
Speaker 5 (02:29):
News talk zeth been now.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
So the sending people to university for the first year
for no charge was supposed to get people who don't
normally go to university to go to university hasn't really worked,
and a lot of people who were going to go
to university anyway just.
Speaker 5 (02:50):
Got that year for free regardless. Is that bad? It
must be bad.
Speaker 6 (02:57):
You've got to wonder how the policy got through the
Boftains and Wellington in the first place. It has by
all accounts failed to achieve its objectives. Did we see
floods of people charged into lecture halls and studying at university?
Speaker 1 (03:10):
No?
Speaker 6 (03:11):
Did we see loads of poorer students benefiting?
Speaker 4 (03:14):
No?
Speaker 5 (03:15):
What did it cost us?
Speaker 6 (03:16):
Again? Two point six billion dollars was the policy costing
three and a half million last year alone. That's one
and a half brand new denedin hospitals. In case you're interested,
And this is what it got us, no increase in participation.
Two hundred and thirty students from poor schools were helped.
(03:36):
This is last year. That is one point three percent.
A whopping Seventy percent of the kids who had their
UNI fees paid for up to twelve thousand dollars each
were from above average socioeconomic schools. They were the wealthier kids.
Did they need it No. I've always backed the interest
(03:58):
free student loan idea because you can borrow and you
don't have to stress about the interest piling up. Then
you can work hard to pay it down once you finish.
But clearly fees free was too much of a free lunch,
not enough discipline or focus in its spending. Now the
problem is that Winston and National have kept this policy
alive they've just changed it to the final year of
(04:21):
study instead of the first year of study. The idea
is that it will encourage students to finish their education,
to finish their degrees. The problem it's not doing that either.
There's no evidence that it's doing that either. So after
all of that said and done, you've got to ask yourself,
with such a high price tag, is the whole thing
worth having at all?
Speaker 5 (04:41):
Yeah, as I was sort of trying to.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Hint at before I played that, But from Ryan there,
I don't know if it's the end of the world
making it easier for people to pay for the university
education even if.
Speaker 5 (04:59):
They were going to do that anyway. Doesn't that benefit everybody?
Speaker 3 (05:04):
But I guess because that wasn't really the stated purpose
of the exercise, we will just.
Speaker 5 (05:12):
Wind it back. We were in a go back to
how it was.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Kind of phased things at the moment, aren't we and
we love it.
Speaker 5 (05:20):
Use talk sib okay.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
So we've got some stats that show people don't want
to buy doer appers anymore. They want something nice and
either nice and you or that has been already done
up and they didn't have to do the doing up, and.
Speaker 7 (05:37):
We could talk about what kind of what a pity
it is to lose these kinds of skills, and how
empowering it is to be able to put a new
lock in a door yourself, or to be able to
drill a seventy millimeters hole in the laundry cabinet so
you can plumb the hot water to your washing machine
yourself instead of getting a plumber in like I did
last week. By the way, I did the drilling, not
getting the plumber obviously. But the truth is, if we
(05:58):
are honest, probably New Zealand is better off if we're
not diying our houses. Don't you think I feel like
it's slightly heretic to say this because of our number
eight WI culture, which we hold so dearly, But I
don't think it's a good idea that we dry our
houses to the extent that we have. If you've done
your own reno like I have, ironically, you'll know what
(06:18):
I mean when I say how alarming alarming it can
be to pull off the jib and see what the
old bloke who owned the house before you did to
the framing. There is a hell of a lot of
dodgy stuff going on behind walls and under houses. That
we aren't actually aware of, and if we were, we
probably wouldn't buy the house. And given the situation with
the Building Act and who's going to be taking responsibility
in all the legislative changes, maybe it isn't a good
(06:40):
idea if we do the dr wise ourselves. In truth,
I think we would be better off being a little
bit more like the younger generation and leaving the DIY
to the qualified builders and moving into houses that have
already been tidied up by the professionals. So maybe in
this instance, the young ones may be onto something.
Speaker 5 (06:56):
I will Usually I'll have a crack it a lot
of things.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
My problem is I don't know my limitations, and I
have completely wrecked the paint job, and.
Speaker 5 (07:07):
Ihn't sweet bath or anything I'm going to do. Tend
to be honest, it's one of those things that just
required a bit of a tached up.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Before you knew, I had the mess of gougers in
the wall and kind of scend off where I got
some masking tape stuck to the wall, and you know,
one thing lead to another. My next job is I've
got to replace the the.
Speaker 5 (07:33):
Handle and.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Security locks on the front door. I've ordered one that
has a fingerprint sensor, so we won't even have to
remember with the pin to get in.
Speaker 5 (07:44):
Anymore, which would be great.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
That'll probably go wrong as well, and we'll probably all
be locked out of the house. I'll let you know
how that goes. Use your so AI update for you.
I mean these are pretty commonplace. You get many AI
updates throughout the day that don't you. This one's what's
something on the farm? Robot apocalypse on the farm.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
You guys have started investing more in AI, and it
wouldn't be typically when you think about AI, and you know,
I'm not being disparaging here, but typically you wouldn't think
a dairy farm would be one to take it on board.
Speaker 8 (08:19):
Okay, so you so you guys have missed a few
Coronation Street episodes, then obviously what's happening in the dairy world.
I have here it's called wearables, So we call them wearables,
and so they are products that have come out that
monitor your cows. And so that could be you can
have a collar that's on your cow, or it could
(08:40):
be an ear tech, or it could be what's called
a bowlus where they where they put like a bean tablets,
you know, type thing into the gut and you've got
all this monitoring of cows were being So it's been
out probably and I'm thinking about six years or so,
but just over the past few years, especially in the
past two or three years, it's rarely really taken taken off.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
Now.
Speaker 8 (09:03):
One one product that you may have heard of is
and it's associated with rocket lad and Central government have
invested in an outbit could halt her and that's a
different lot of another once again another wearable, but having
the ability to not have to have fences. So it's
a bit like a I suppose, but like a mower,
(09:24):
you know, he doesn't go beyond a certain Yeah. Yeah,
so you may have heard of that, that young young guy.
Not that I want to give him lots of time,
that's right, but another product, but wearable. This is something
we're using in cow sheds to monitor their wellbeing, to
identify especially when they're on heat. So when you can
go to mating, which we call AI because that's artificial insemination,
(09:50):
very confusing and and there's lots of things when we're
dealing with animals that humans animals what he's talking about.
So this this past season for mating back in the
spring or the end of the spring, we're taking that
we're going because we've invested so much in that capital
of those colors, we decided not to get the big boys,
get the big Freezians to come in at the end
(10:13):
to do their rampy bompy stuff at the very end,
to get those girls that weren't actually pregnant. So what
we're doing is we're relying one hundred percent on the
data and they comes and should get milked if they're
on heap.
Speaker 5 (10:28):
That sounds romantic.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Quite a lot of detail, there wasn't it about the
bovine Rumpy Pumpy was in some kind of technical farming too.
I wonder that we've got some cows and the paddock
across from my house, so no wonder they look at
me strangely. Sometimes used talk zip bean pies and tomato sauce.
(10:59):
What bit a way wrap the podcast with today, here's.
Speaker 9 (11:02):
A question for you that if you're buying a pie,
if you're buying a meat pie from a gas station
or from a dairy, and you want tomato sauce with it,
and you buy one of those sachees of tomato sauce,
when those squeeze piece he used personal control. How much
do they cost? This is something I need to say
(11:23):
about this. How much would you pay for tomato sauce
when you get your pie? Could we have a quick
round up of three or four people tell me the
answer to that?
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Please?
Speaker 9 (11:30):
If you could phone that through for e very keen
to know about that. If you brought a pie and
you get a special sachet of sauce, how much is
that going to cost you?
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Seven?
Speaker 5 (11:38):
Yeah, ring me up if you got an.
Speaker 9 (11:41):
Answer to that one. If you've experienced that, because some
of you will be pie people. How much would you
pay for your sauce? I've got a number in mind.
I'm just curious to know.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
And once again, this is a masterclass and talkback radio,
isn't it? Because he didn't tell you how much you
paid for a sauce right there, and then he would
reveal that later on in the show spoilers two dollars
a sauce. I hate to think how much the exeral
pie was the sauces two dollars. I'm not really a
(12:10):
source on a pie kind of a guy. I feel
like the saucers already in the pie. If your pie
is not saucy enough, already. You're just making it messier
and saucier at that point, especially if it's a secret
service station pie that you're trying to eat with one
(12:32):
hand while driving, but the potential for a.
Speaker 5 (12:36):
Pie disaster the car, it's just increased many minifold, isn't it.
I am a glen hat.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
I desperately want to pie now, don't really eat pies anymore.
Speaker 5 (12:55):
Unfortunately, that are there. I'm back in the day. Ah,
those are the guys. I'll see you bet.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
I'm going to reflect on that all weekend, and I'll
see you back here again on Monday.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Use Talking Talking z it bem for more from News
Talk st B. Listen live on air or online, and
keep our shows with you wherever you go with our
podcasts on iHeartRadio
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk Said B.
Follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Used Talk Said Talk.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Hello, my beautiful beanies, and welcome to the Bean for Friday.
First with yesterday's news, I am Glen Hart. We're looking
back at Thursday. We discovered that the fees free scheme
definitely didn't work as people had hoped. We've also got
other data suggesting that nobody wants to renovate a home anymore.
(00:47):
They would like to buy what that's already been done.
AI on the Farm and Source on pies. So we'll
finish up, but will begin talking insurance in the wake
of something weird happening with the client climate. Have you
noticed that you noticed that this weird weather.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
So AA has said to Westport that if it's flood
exposure drops below the maximum exposure limit in the future,
if the flood banks, if they believe the flood banks
will do the job of protecting the homes, then they'll
reopen books to new customers. But they're not the first
insurer to stop insuring where they deem the risk is
(01:28):
too great, and they certainly won't be the last. So
as I say, We can argue all we like about
climate change and who's responsible and whether anyone should be
held responsible at or it really doesn't matter because policies
are being drafted, policies are being enacted that take climate
(01:48):
change into account, and whatever we believe where will be
denied insurance paying the increased premiums, reshaping our towns and
communities as a result of what the banks, the insurers
and the council believe.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
That's all well and good, But in the deck of
my mind, I do keep recollecting stories of insurance companies
and banks making record profits. So I wonder if there's
a heavy medium there of some kind. Probably not, I mean,
we must make a record profit every year.
Speaker 5 (02:29):
News talk zeth been now.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
So the sending people to university for the first year
for no charge was supposed to get people who don't
normally go to university to go to university hasn't really worked,
and a lot of people who were going to go
to university anyway just.
Speaker 5 (02:50):
Got that year for free regardless. Is that bad? It
must be bad.
Speaker 6 (02:57):
You've got to wonder how the policy got through the
Boftains and Wellington in the first place. It has by
all accounts failed to achieve its objectives. Did we see
floods of people charged into lecture halls and studying at university?
Speaker 1 (03:10):
No?
Speaker 6 (03:11):
Did we see loads of poorer students benefiting?
Speaker 4 (03:14):
No?
Speaker 5 (03:15):
What did it cost us?
Speaker 6 (03:16):
Again? Two point six billion dollars was the policy costing
three and a half million last year alone. That's one
and a half brand new denedin hospitals. In case you're interested,
And this is what it got us, no increase in participation.
Two hundred and thirty students from poor schools were helped.
(03:36):
This is last year. That is one point three percent.
A whopping Seventy percent of the kids who had their
UNI fees paid for up to twelve thousand dollars each
were from above average socioeconomic schools. They were the wealthier kids.
Did they need it No. I've always backed the interest
(03:58):
free student loan idea because you can borrow and you
don't have to stress about the interest piling up. Then
you can work hard to pay it down once you finish.
But clearly fees free was too much of a free lunch,
not enough discipline or focus in its spending. Now the
problem is that Winston and National have kept this policy
alive they've just changed it to the final year of
(04:21):
study instead of the first year of study. The idea
is that it will encourage students to finish their education,
to finish their degrees. The problem it's not doing that either.
There's no evidence that it's doing that either. So after
all of that said and done, you've got to ask yourself,
with such a high price tag, is the whole thing
worth having at all?
Speaker 5 (04:41):
Yeah, as I was sort of trying to.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Hint at before I played that, But from Ryan there,
I don't know if it's the end of the world
making it easier for people to pay for the university
education even if.
Speaker 5 (04:59):
They were going to do that anyway. Doesn't that benefit everybody?
Speaker 3 (05:04):
But I guess because that wasn't really the stated purpose
of the exercise, we will just.
Speaker 5 (05:12):
Wind it back. We were in a go back to
how it was.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Kind of phased things at the moment, aren't we and
we love it.
Speaker 5 (05:20):
Use talk sib okay.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
So we've got some stats that show people don't want
to buy doer appers anymore. They want something nice and
either nice and you or that has been already done
up and they didn't have to do the doing up, and.
Speaker 7 (05:37):
We could talk about what kind of what a pity
it is to lose these kinds of skills, and how
empowering it is to be able to put a new
lock in a door yourself, or to be able to
drill a seventy millimeters hole in the laundry cabinet so
you can plumb the hot water to your washing machine
yourself instead of getting a plumber in like I did
last week. By the way, I did the drilling, not
getting the plumber obviously. But the truth is, if we
(05:58):
are honest, probably New Zealand is better off if we're
not diying our houses. Don't you think I feel like
it's slightly heretic to say this because of our number
eight WI culture, which we hold so dearly, But I
don't think it's a good idea that we dry our
houses to the extent that we have. If you've done
your own reno like I have, ironically, you'll know what
(06:18):
I mean when I say how alarming alarming it can
be to pull off the jib and see what the
old bloke who owned the house before you did to
the framing. There is a hell of a lot of
dodgy stuff going on behind walls and under houses. That
we aren't actually aware of, and if we were, we
probably wouldn't buy the house. And given the situation with
the Building Act and who's going to be taking responsibility
in all the legislative changes, maybe it isn't a good
(06:40):
idea if we do the dr wise ourselves. In truth,
I think we would be better off being a little
bit more like the younger generation and leaving the DIY
to the qualified builders and moving into houses that have
already been tidied up by the professionals. So maybe in
this instance, the young ones may be onto something.
Speaker 5 (06:56):
I will Usually I'll have a crack it a lot
of things.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
My problem is I don't know my limitations, and I
have completely wrecked the paint job, and.
Speaker 5 (07:07):
Ihn't sweet bath or anything I'm going to do. Tend
to be honest, it's one of those things that just
required a bit of a tached up.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Before you knew, I had the mess of gougers in
the wall and kind of scend off where I got
some masking tape stuck to the wall, and you know,
one thing lead to another. My next job is I've
got to replace the the.
Speaker 5 (07:33):
Handle and.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Security locks on the front door. I've ordered one that
has a fingerprint sensor, so we won't even have to
remember with the pin to get in.
Speaker 5 (07:44):
Anymore, which would be great.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
That'll probably go wrong as well, and we'll probably all
be locked out of the house. I'll let you know
how that goes. Use your so AI update for you.
I mean these are pretty commonplace. You get many AI
updates throughout the day that don't you. This one's what's
something on the farm? Robot apocalypse on the farm.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
You guys have started investing more in AI, and it
wouldn't be typically when you think about AI, and you know,
I'm not being disparaging here, but typically you wouldn't think
a dairy farm would be one to take it on board.
Speaker 8 (08:19):
Okay, so you so you guys have missed a few
Coronation Street episodes, then obviously what's happening in the dairy world.
I have here it's called wearables, So we call them wearables,
and so they are products that have come out that
monitor your cows. And so that could be you can
have a collar that's on your cow, or it could
(08:40):
be an ear tech, or it could be what's called
a bowlus where they where they put like a bean tablets,
you know, type thing into the gut and you've got
all this monitoring of cows were being So it's been
out probably and I'm thinking about six years or so,
but just over the past few years, especially in the
past two or three years, it's rarely really taken taken off.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
Now.
Speaker 8 (09:03):
One one product that you may have heard of is
and it's associated with rocket lad and Central government have
invested in an outbit could halt her and that's a
different lot of another once again another wearable, but having
the ability to not have to have fences. So it's
a bit like a I suppose, but like a mower,
(09:24):
you know, he doesn't go beyond a certain Yeah. Yeah,
so you may have heard of that, that young young guy.
Not that I want to give him lots of time,
that's right, but another product, but wearable. This is something
we're using in cow sheds to monitor their wellbeing, to
identify especially when they're on heat. So when you can
go to mating, which we call AI because that's artificial insemination,
(09:50):
very confusing and and there's lots of things when we're
dealing with animals that humans animals what he's talking about.
So this this past season for mating back in the
spring or the end of the spring, we're taking that
we're going because we've invested so much in that capital
of those colors, we decided not to get the big boys,
get the big Freezians to come in at the end
(10:13):
to do their rampy bompy stuff at the very end,
to get those girls that weren't actually pregnant. So what
we're doing is we're relying one hundred percent on the
data and they comes and should get milked if they're
on heap.
Speaker 5 (10:28):
That sounds romantic.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Quite a lot of detail, there wasn't it about the
bovine Rumpy Pumpy was in some kind of technical farming too.
I wonder that we've got some cows and the paddock
across from my house, so no wonder they look at
me strangely. Sometimes used talk zip bean pies and tomato sauce.
(10:59):
What bit a way wrap the podcast with today, here's.
Speaker 9 (11:02):
A question for you that if you're buying a pie,
if you're buying a meat pie from a gas station
or from a dairy, and you want tomato sauce with it,
and you buy one of those sachees of tomato sauce,
when those squeeze piece he used personal control. How much
do they cost? This is something I need to say
(11:23):
about this. How much would you pay for tomato sauce
when you get your pie? Could we have a quick
round up of three or four people tell me the
answer to that?
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Please?
Speaker 9 (11:30):
If you could phone that through for e very keen
to know about that. If you brought a pie and
you get a special sachet of sauce, how much is
that going to cost you?
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Seven?
Speaker 5 (11:38):
Yeah, ring me up if you got an.
Speaker 9 (11:41):
Answer to that one. If you've experienced that, because some
of you will be pie people. How much would you
pay for your sauce? I've got a number in mind.
I'm just curious to know.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
And once again, this is a masterclass and talkback radio,
isn't it? Because he didn't tell you how much you
paid for a sauce right there, and then he would
reveal that later on in the show spoilers two dollars
a sauce. I hate to think how much the exeral
pie was the sauces two dollars. I'm not really a
(12:10):
source on a pie kind of a guy. I feel
like the saucers already in the pie. If your pie
is not saucy enough, already. You're just making it messier
and saucier at that point, especially if it's a secret
service station pie that you're trying to eat with one
(12:32):
hand while driving, but the potential for a.
Speaker 5 (12:36):
Pie disaster the car, it's just increased many minifold, isn't it.
I am a glen hat.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
I desperately want to pie now, don't really eat pies anymore.
Speaker 5 (12:55):
Unfortunately, that are there. I'm back in the day. Ah,
those are the guys. I'll see you bet.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
I'm going to reflect on that all weekend, and I'll
see you back here again on Monday.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Use Talking Talking z it bem for more from News
Talk st B. Listen live on air or online, and
keep our shows with you wherever you go with our
podcasts on iHeartRadio
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