Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

I’ve really surprised myself. Because, even though I think it’s totally shameful that people have been helping Tom Phillips keep his kids in hiding for nearly four years, I’m torn when it comes to how important it is that these people face consequences for their actions. 

To the point where I’ve realised that it’s not as important to me as I thought it would be to me. 

Locals in the area are already poo-pooing the chances...

I was wrong and the police were right.   

After yesterday’s events, I’ll admit that I was wrong when I said over the last few years that the police were pussy-footing around with Tom Phillips.  

That instead of waiting for him to come out of hiding with his three kids, they should've been more gung-ho on it and gone after him.  

Yesterday changed all that and proved to me that the police did do the right thing. ...

What does kicking overstayers out of the country actually achieve?

With just under 21,000 overstayers in New Zealand, the Government is planning a crackdown. But the Green Party wants an amnesty. Reason being that most people living here without visas are what the Greens describe as being “active in their communities”. Plus, they’ve got families here.

Or, to put it another way, if someone overstays their welcome, they’re committing...

Sir Ron Young, who used to be a high court judge and used to be chair of the Parole Board, thinks shorter sentences could take the strain off the justice system.  

He says shorter sentences make people less likely to re-offend because they don’t spend as much time with other offenders and that would mean less people going through the courts.

There are two ways we could respond to that. We could think about it with a long-term,...

We would be mad to pull out of the Paris Climate Change Agreement.  

ACT leader David Seymour thinks differently though, saying its emissions targets are "disconnected from science and blind to New Zealand's realities".  

He says net zero targets have been set with no regard for the real cost to firms, farms, and families, and he wants out.  

Out of 197 countries, 193 are signed up to the accord. David Seymour wants ...

Labour and National appear to be aligned on the Paris Climate Agreement.  

Yesterday ACT called for New Zealand to leave unless the terms of the deal change, but the Prime Minister said no.  

Labour's Chris Hipkins echoed Christopher Luxon, telling John MacDonald leaving the deal would cause more harm than good.  

He says it would be a disaster for us – walking away from those commitments would mean people overseas w...

At one point after the earthquakes, I had the insurance company telling me that it wanted to replace the driveway before the sewer line that ran under it had been repaired. 

When I explained to them that, maybe, that wasn’t the most practical way of doing things —that it might make more sense to wait until the underground work had been done before putting the nice new driveway down— they agreed.  

If only the Christchurch...

You know a Government is in trouble when you see a major news organisation running an online poll asking people whether they think the Prime Minister has had a good week or not. Which I saw the other week.

And you know a coalition is in trouble when you get one of its senior members telling a public meeting that the Prime Minister is hiding. Which is what NZ First’s Shane Jones did yesterday.

Things come in threes, of course, so le...

Associate Health Minister Nicole McKee is talking nonsense when she says most of us who drink alcohol do it responsibly. 

If she really believes that, then she needs to get out more often. 

But I don’t think there’s much we can do about it because when it comes to alcohol, the horse has already bolted. 

She made the comment when she announced changes that will stop people opposing liquor licence applications if they ...

It’s just over four years since the Commerce Commission released its first report on the supermarket sector in New Zealand and, yesterday, the Government announced what it’s going to do.

Which, in my view, will achieve nothing.

To be fair, Nicola Willis wasn’t in Government four years ago and it was Labour that received that first report and went about hiring the Grocery Commissioner.

Who, I think we can all agree, has done next-to...

If this doesn’t convince you that the insurance system in this country is broken, nothing will.

Consumer NZ has revealed that in the past 25 years, the cost of insurance has increased by 900%. The largest increase of anything in the Consumer Price Index. 

If you’ve bought insurance of any type in the past, maybe that won’t surprise you. Because insurance is a necessary evil and with necessary evils, we tend to shrug our should...

I think it would be very easy to push-back on Retirement Commissioner Jane Wrightson’s call for changes to the KiwiSaver scheme to make it easier for self-employed people to save for their retirement.

But I’m not going to.

She wants to see changes because people who work for themselves are contributing nowhere near as much as employees —partly because they don’t get the benefit of an employer making contributions— and she says that...

We'll be chewing through the power in the south this week with the frosty weather.

Which is the "ideal time" for Transpower to reveal that the budget for a major upgrade of electricity transmission lines in the South Island has increased again and that South Islanders will be paying for it.

Which raises the question: Is this taking user-pays too far? And I think it is.

What’s happened, is Transpower is upgrading its lines north of ...

How do you feel about people being allowed to hide their convictions?

There are two ways of doing it. 1) Just don’t tell people about it. Or use the clean slate legislation, which wipes your record clean if you’ve had no convictions for seven years.

If you’ve been to prison for your offences though, you don’t qualify.

Concerns about the legislation are being raised after an Auckland man with historical indecency convictions was abl...

Questions have been raised about where a Christchurch homeless community being booted out of a church carpark will go next.  

City Council's issued an abatement notice requiring Avonside's Holy Trinity Church carpark to stop being used as a campground by 5pm.  

An extension is possible if a new resource consent, allowing camping, is obtained.  

Labour's Christchurch East MP Reuben Davidson told John MacDonald the pro...

What would you say to a $40,000 pay rise? Yes please?

If you’re the chief executive of Environment Canterbury regional council, you would.

It’s been revealed that in the last financial year, Stefanie Rixecker’s pay increased by 9.3 %, upping her salary by $40,000 to just under $480,000, making her the highest-paid regional council boss in the country.

And this wasn’t one of those decisions by the Independent Remuneration Authority,...

More than 20 thousand secondary teachers are walking off the job today to strike over the lowest pay increase offer in a generation. 

Post-Primary Teachers Association members will picket outside dozens of schools and MP offices after rejecting a 3% pay increase over three years. 

Opposition Leader Chris Hipkins told John MacDonald teachers deserve more than the Government's offering. 

He says that if they accept thi...

You won’t get me tooting for the striking high school teachers.

Because I don’t think they’re reading the room at all. On the picket lines, unhappy that they've been offered a 3% increase over three years.

And this is nothing to do with the kids not being able to go to school today, because high school kids don’t need babysitting. They can just stay at home and work on their assignments, or go to the mall, or go into town.

The reas...