Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

The Police Minister is reassuring retailers officers will still turn up to reports of shoplifting. 

RNZ reports staff have been directed to not investigate retail crime below $500 and online fraud below $1000.  

Police may not take further action if the reports don't have enough evidence, such as CCTV. 

However, Mark Mitchell told Kerre Woodham every crime deserves a response. 

He says he wants to be clear that ...

Two new ‘non-financial’ sanctions have come into force today for beneficiaries, who, in the words of the MSD, do not meet their obligations or, as other people might put it, who do not get off their arses and go and look for a job.

Some people may have half their weekly benefits put onto a payment card for four weeks, that can only be spent on essential items at approved shops. Others may also have to find volunteer work for a...

It's been revealed how outdoor education can help build teenagers up. 

The Boyle River Outdoor Education Centre is 20 minutes east of the Lewis Pass. 

They're a not-for-profit organisation offering outdoor education programmes to secondary school groups and are in the business of fostering leadership, growth and confidence in young people. 

Boyle River Outdoor Education Centre Manager Sharon Nicholas talks to Kerre W...

The Prime Minister's keen to raise the retirement age -- but it's not possible in coalition with New Zealand First.

The Government is halving its KiwiSaver contribution rate -- and canning if people earning more than 180-thousand dollars.

The default rate of worker and business contributions to KiwiSaver will rise over time.

Chris Luxon told Kerre Woodham pushing out the retirement age to 67 makes sense.

He says Labour doesn't thin...

Isn't it cruelly, cruelly ironic that yesterday we were talking about just how tough it is in retail, and we have the news that after 145 years, Smith and Caughey's, the last of the great, grand department stores, famous for the high-end goods, the beautiful Christmas window displays, will close its doors for the final time by July 31st. Ninety-eight jobs will be lost, but it's more losing a bastion of retail, it goes beyond the cl...

I don't know where the Head of Research at JLL, the commercial property company, I does his shopping, but it cannot be anywhere that I go. If you've ever wondered what the definition of gaslighting is, you may well have heard it this morning. Chris Dibble —the Head of Research at JLL— was on the wireless claiming that we have a critical under-supply of retail space in this country, and that to keep pace with population and demand w...

Public transport is brilliant when it works. You cannot beat it for convenience, for timeliness, for moving large numbers of people expeditiously and in an environmentally friendly-ish kind of a way, when it works. When it doesn't, it's a pain. Look at the poor Auckland rail commuters this morning – due to an infrastructure issue at Penrose, there were delays and cancellations. No services running through Newmarket on the Southern ...

There are hopes investment in rail is just the boost Auckland needs. 

The Government will tip more than $600 million of Government funding in Budget 2025 to fully fund the Rail Network Investment Programme until 2027. 

The freight network will get $461 million, and $143 million will be spent on Auckland and Wellington's metropolitan trains. 

Greater Auckland director Matt Lowrie told Kerre Woodham some maintenance ha...

Northland might be the meth capital of New Zealand, but Hawkes Bay wouldn't be far behind. One tiny town – Waipukurau - recorded the biggest increase in meth consumption in the country in 2024. It was up more than 300 percent.

What concerns the local coppers is that the community staying schtum about who's supplying the drug as Inspector Martin James told 1News last night. 

“One of the key concerns for me here in Central Hawke...

The Green Party is suggesting an overhaul of the tax system in their alternative Budget. 

It includes taxing wealth, inheritance, gifts, and private jet journeys, and they say it would bring in $88 billion in revenue over four years.  

New income tax rates of 39% on income over $120,000 and 45% on income over $180,000 would be introduced, and the corporate tax rate would be raised to 33%, 3% higher than Australia's curren...

Are the Greens bonkers? The Greens have come out and criticised Judith Collins for tinkering with the Public Service Commission census – that's a voluntary survey run over three weeks and it's a follow up to the initial 2021 survey of the same name. Now Judith Collins and her office had a look at the 2021 survey, and they suggested a few changes. They had thoughts about the census, and they said we don't really need the questions a...

Well, what a to-do. The image of Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters slumped in the House, head in his hands, summed it up really. Brooke van Velden dropped the C-bomb in the house, quoting a Stuff article whose author used the word in criticising the government's decision to amend the pay equity legislation. The coalition's female MPs are angry that Labour MPs, particularly the female MPs, have not condemned the journalist’s use ...

In this spirit of taking the good news where we find it, I was absolutely delighted to see the results of Inland Revenue going after student loan defaulters. At the end of April, there were 113,733 people with student loans believed to be based overseas. If you're based overseas, you don't get the student loan automatically taken out of your pay packet. Overseas, it's up to you to make repayments, and more than 70% of those are in ...

School principals say they’re grappling with growing numbers of new entrants with behaviour and oral communication issues - and believe the Covid-19 pandemic is to blame.

They’re calling for more investment in learning support to help address the problem.

Kerre Woodham believes the problem lies not with the education system, but rather with parents who fail to prepare their kids to enter it.

"How about principals, instead of moanin...

Inland Revenue says attitudes are shifting among student loan holders living overseas.  

More than $200 million has been collected from overseas borrowers since July last year – a big annual increase. 

More than 24,000 people are thought to be overseas, collectively owing $1.3 billion on loans going back more than 15 years. 

IRD's Jane Elley told Kerre Woodham since they received additional funding they’ve been able ...

This particular pre-Budget announcement should be music to the ears of parents who are currently working every hour God sends to pay for extra maths coaching for their children. You might have heard them on this show before – parents who really can't afford it, but say to themselves they can't afford not to, pay for the sort of tuition that teachers are unable to give in school, that one-on-one coaching to fix the gaps in literacy ...

The government sent a strong signal to boy racers that their days of running amok on the roads are over.

Car crushing is not new, it's been announced before - Judith Collins was police minister in 2009 when car crashing legislation was introduced for recidivist boy racer offenders, hence her sobriquet, Crusher. In fact, only three cars were crushed and Judith Collins wasn't the police minister by the time it happened, because he ne...

There's bad news, really, and it's been coming and I think I've had my head in the sand for some time. I've been wanting things to get better quickly. I've wanted things to move out from grindy-ness, and a lack of fun, and excess, and nonsense. It's just been for four years of long, slow grind, it seems.  

Well, Matthew Hooton's opinion piece in the New Zealand Herald has laid it out starkly, unequivocally, in no uncertain ter...

Warnings to be careful after a string of fires was linked to lithium-ion batteries.  

Scrap metal company Sims Metal has been fined $30 thousand over a 2023 fire that released toxic smoke near Ōtāhuhu. 

A massive blaze at a recycling plant near Glenfield last month was also linked to lithium-ion batteries, as well as a number of fires breaking out in rubbish trucks across the city. 

Fire and Emergency New Zealand's C...