/on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/rss 九一星空无限 Sat, 12 Jul 2025 05:09:22 Z en /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-ryan-bridge-wellington-is-in-for-a-tempestuous-election-campaign/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-ryan-bridge-wellington-is-in-for-a-tempestuous-election-campaign/ The Wellington Mayoral race was supposed to be winding down into boring town.  Tory went wild, had a tipsy whirlwind on Courtenay Place. A bit of booze, a bit of dine and dashing. It was salacious, it was scandalous.  As stories of late-night escapades and unpaid bills and missed council meetings flooded the newspapers, the streets flooded, literally. Every time a scandal burst onto the front page of The Post, so did a pipe. It was as if Wellington’s infrastructure were protesting the incompetence at City Hall.  Poonamis. An onslaught of cycleways. Crime. And still no second Mount Victoria tunnel.  It all came to a head, of course. Andrew Little entered the chat. Tory pulls out.  And from here it was meant to get boring. You know in an action movie when all the crazy stuff happens, there's half an hour left on the clock, but the world's been saved by superhero XYZ? All the main cast is safe and well and life goes on happily ever after?  That's where I thought we were with Wellington's Mayoral Race.  Well, Wellington, you're getting a sequel – within the original.   Mayoral candidate Ray Chung sent his colleagues an email, regaling them with a story a friend told him while he was out walking his dog. In it, he says, Tory Whanau had drug-fuelled tempestuous sex with a bunch of young guys. He also claims he was told that she had pendulous soft breasts.   It's starting to smell a little bit like Ontario in Canada. Remember the mayor who was accused of smoking crack? Just scandal through a local election campaign.  To get real for a minute, two things. One: Tory denies the story completely and utterly rejects it.   Two: Ray sent this to three fellow councillors on their personal email addresses. So, it was a private email, he claims. And Ray reckons that one of those people has leaked it to Tory, who has leaked it to the press.   So then you start to wonder, is one of Ray’s former fellow council mates now turning on him, perhaps for political reasons? I don't know the answer to that question. All I really know is that Wellington, you need some popcorn because you're in for one hell of a tempestuous election campaign.    Fri, 11 Jul 2025 05:47:45 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-ryan-bridge-nukes-have-prevented-80-years-of-major-war/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-ryan-bridge-nukes-have-prevented-80-years-of-major-war/ It's been 40 years since the French sunk the Rainbow Warrior. They wanted to stop the protests against nuclear testing at Mururoa. The terrorist attack by an allied country on on our soil was outrageous. Two years after the event, we cemented our nuclear free stance. We're officially against nuclear weapons. Testing is bad for the environment, no doubt. But let me ask you a question. Since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, have we had another world war? The answer is no. We've had decades of cold war between Russia and the West.We've had plenty of conflict - Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East.But nothing's escalated quite in the way it did in World Wars I and II. I think you've got to ask yourself why? Did we collectively realise the bloody cost of far away battles and drawing our friends into conflict?Did we wake up after the second round and think, oh, world wars aren't that great. Or we witness the power of atomic weapons in Japan and scare ourselves silly? The theory of nuclear deterrence basically says that yes nukes are evil inventions, but their existence deters your enemies from attacking you for fear you'll hit back with a nuke. Mutually assured destruction. It's like schoolyard bullies. You don't pick on a guy who's got a bunch of older brothers who could then come beat you up. The threat of getting totally annihilated deters you from picking on somebody with nukes, or, messing with their friends. Nukes are bad. But does anybody think without them we'd have gone 80 years without a major world war? Thu, 10 Jul 2025 07:31:00 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-ryan-bridge-winston-just-keeps-going/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-ryan-bridge-winston-just-keeps-going/ Winston's done it again. The old political workhorse of the Pacific just keeps getting more popular. New Zealand First has overtaken ACT in the latest Taxpayer's Union Curia Poll - it's now the third most popular party. I'll give you a break down of the numbers shortly, but this has got to be ego bruising for Seymour. He's just got his feet under the Deputy's desk and he's been overtaken in the polls by the bloke he's replaced. Not that simply being the Deputy PM gets you votes, but he's trying to make a good fist of it. Seymour's holding press conferences left, right and centre. Yesterday, a stand-up reacting to no change in the OCR. Today, a stand-up on Stats NZ numbers. Luxon's overseas on holiday. Winston's East Asia Summit Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Kuala Lumpur. Seymour's been bogged down with Regulatory Standard's Bill, the Treaty bill and school lunches. Winston's been flying around the world keeping us in line with China and staving off Trump's tariffs... all while celebrating his 80th birthday. And to top it off, he's keeping cash in circulation. Winston is popular because he speaks his mind and knows what he's talking about. He commands respect. When he speaks, people listen. He's a good example of a man who keeps it simple. Do your job and do it well. Work hard and stay focussed. It's a pretty simple formula that's seen him through the last 40+ years in politics and ion these numbers will see him through atleast a couple more yet. LISTEN ABOVE Thu, 10 Jul 2025 04:43:09 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-ryan-bridge-the-moa-was-a-bird-ahead-of-its-time/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-ryan-bridge-the-moa-was-a-bird-ahead-of-its-time/ The moa was a visionary bird well ahead of its time. Bringing them back from extinction makes perfect sense - we'll be setting them free. They can finally live their best life. Spread their wings - metaphorically, of course, cause they don't actually have wings. But they'll be free in this brave, new modern world. Firstly, they're vegan. So hip and trendy box number one - big tick. Wait till somebody introduces them to the incredible burger, or eggplant sandwiches with vegan slaw. They'll love that. But wait, it gets woker. The women are dominant - one and half times bigger than the men and two and half times the weight. Trendy, progressive box number two - tick. Number 3 - turns out they were quite oppressed back in the day. Victims, you could call them. Also very trendy today. Hunted to extinction by men with spears, slaughtered and eaten. You know what that means in 2025 - lived experience. Wait for the wellness podcast and the Oprah interview. And then there's the obvious but awkward issue of being a bird with no wings. A bird that can't fly. Kiwi are so embarrassed by this they only come out at night in case any one notices this deformity. But moa stand at up to 3.5m tall in broad daylight, which is quite hard to miss. It's not like you can hide behind another bird or a tree or anything else, really. They stick out like the Sky Tower, which is more fodder for the podcast, no doubt. So to the moa, who we will soon raise from the dead: Welcome to a brand new world. Welcome the world you deserved from the beginning. LISTEN ABOVE Wed, 09 Jul 2025 07:30:18 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-ryan-bridge-jacinda-needs-to-face-the-covid-inquiry-music/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-ryan-bridge-jacinda-needs-to-face-the-covid-inquiry-music/ Should Jacinda Ardern return to the country and face the Covid inquiry music? The answer, I think, must be yes. I confirmed this morning on my Herald NOW show that the Royal Commission has reached out to Jacinda and asked her to attend in August. The KC running the show would not answer whether she'd replied or whether she'd lawyered up, but he did say that the only way to get out of attending is if you're not the in the country because they don't have jurisdiction. So the question is: as a former Prime Minister who wielded more power than Muldoon - war-time executive powers - as somebody who's always claimed their intentions were good, and as somebody who's claimed they were in politics for the children, will the former PM front this inquiry and be honest? Honest about what really went on behind closed doors and behind those PPE masks? Boris Johnson appeared at his country's inquiry, and twiddled his fingers and answered all that was put before him. Isn't there a moral obligation to the people of New Zealand, too? They still live with the consequences of decisions that she and her Cabinet made. She's making money off books and all sorts while many businesses here never recovered from lockdowns. Isn't a little truth-telling in order? I was one of just a handful of interviewers who grilled her on a weekly basis during this time period. I'm saving the best bits for a book one day, but there was image and stage control happening behind the scenes you wouldn't believe.   The problem for Jacinda if she decides not to front is this - and it's a question Kiwis will be asking themselves - what has she got to hide? LISTEN ABOVE Mon, 07 Jul 2025 07:38:29 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-are-ird-really-the-bad-guys-when-it-comes-to-student-debt/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-are-ird-really-the-bad-guys-when-it-comes-to-student-debt/ Right, tell me what you think of this.  There seems to be a bit of an effort underway at the moment to portray IRD as bad guys because they're chasing Kiwis overseas who owe money on their student loans.  Now, tell me if you think that we should let either of these two off the hook on the money that they owe.  The first is a pilot who moved to Australia 10 years ago. He now owes IRD $170,000. That is his original loan, plus basically mostly interest.  He says he moved there for a pilot job in 2014, did it for six years, lost it during COVID, had to take a low-paying job in a storage warehouse.  He's a pilot again, but this loan is so big, he doesn't know if he's ever gonna be able to pay it back.  Should we let him off his debt?  Or do you, like me, look at what a regional commercial pilot in Australia can earn, which is over $100,000 and possibly even closer to $200,000 Australian dollars, and think, he can probably afford to start paying back that debt.  The second is a woman who has a debt of $70,000.  Now, she moved to the United States 20 years ago.  She wants to come back now to see her sick mom, but she can't because she's worried that she's gonna be arrested at the border.  Should we wipe her debt? So she can come home and see her sick mom?  Or do you like me, think that's entirely her decision.  She can come back and see her sick mom. Ain't nobody stopping her doing that. And maybe when she gets here, we'll have a little chat about how she can start to make some repayments on that debt.  Or she can carry on like she is, which is clearly valuing her money over her mom. Not coming back.   And by the way, arrests over the border only happen to the worst offenders who've who've ignored all attempts by IRD to sort out the debt.  Now, don't think I'm callous, right? I do feel sorry for both of these people and everybody else like them, because I imagine it's a horrible situation to be in, to allow your debt to get that out of hand.  But that is not an excuse not to pay it back. IRD is, from what I can tell, pretty reasonable here.  So much so that that woman's $70,000 debt has now been reduced to only $15,000 so it just covers the original debt in the end. The penalties have been wiped. This is them coming to the party to try to help.  Sorry, the free ride is over, the repayments need to start. New Zealand is broke, we actually need this money back.  I applaud IRD for going hard on this, and so far, I'm completely unmoved by any attempts to paint them as bad guys.  I am yet to come across a single case where I think that IRD is being unfair, asking for the student loan to be repaid.  Fri, 04 Jul 2025 06:09:23 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-the-rachel-reeves-incident-will-be-used-against-women-in-significant-roles/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-the-rachel-reeves-incident-will-be-used-against-women-in-significant-roles/ This is gonna sound harsh and I know it - but I think women like Rachel Reeves need to stop crying in public.This is the biggest news that is in the UK at the moment. The Chancellor, who's basically the equivalent of our Nicola Willis, started crying in Parliament. Now I feel really sorry for her, cause it looks like she is going to probably end up taking the fall for a man's incompetence because Keir Starmer, her Prime Minister, is weak and is giving into a rebellion and has forced a U-turn on her, thereby undermining her fiscal plans. And then after all of that, after doing all of that to her and humiliating her in public, what then happened in Parliament is what sparked the tears. He was asked whether, after all of the humiliation he's put her through, he's going to keep her in the job, and he would not confirm that he would keep her in the job. And she's sitting directly behind him, the cameras capture it, her face crumbles and the tears start rolling - and you'd have to be heartless not to feel for the woman, because it is incredibly clear that she is trying so hard not to cry, but she cannot help it. But women have got to stop crying in public. If you cannot stop yourself crying in public because it is too much, get up, leave the room, do it privately. I was reading Jacinda's book last night, again - I mean, talk about crying, there's another crier - and in it, she tells the story of being pregnant and talking to a successful corporate woman at a function. And she couldn't find a word that she was looking for and she said to the woman, "Oh, baby brain." And then she laughed, but the woman didn't laugh. The woman looked at her with a stern face and said to her, "You can never say that." And the reason is obvious - because if she says that in public, Jacinda Ardern's opponents would have seized on it, but also people in general would have seized on it as an example that women cannot do significant jobs while being pregnant and being mums. And the same is unfortunately true for Rachel Reeves. There will be people who will seize on this as an example that women cannot handle significant and stressful jobs because women are inherently more emotional. Now, I realize that what I'm saying is controversial because we have been told time and time again by people like John Kirwan that we're not supposed to bottle things up and we are supposed to talk about it. But I think we've gone completely in the other direction. We are now at risk of oversharing everything that we're feeling. By all means, talk about it. Talk to the people closest to you. Cry all you like behind closed doors to them. But if you're gonna cry in public, leave the room - especially, for God's sake, if you're a woman in a big job because it reflects on all women. LISTEN ABOVE Thu, 03 Jul 2025 07:04:21 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-lets-not-get-weird-about-helicopters-and-rich-listers/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-lets-not-get-weird-about-helicopters-and-rich-listers/ This debate about Anna Mowbray and Ali Williams' helicopter has just got really, really silly in the last day. There is now a push for Auckland Council to ban private choppers in residential areas altogether when they next review the unitary plan for Auckland city, and at least 2 councillors now back that. And one of the councillors backing it is the councillor whose ward covers the Mowbray property. Now I'm sorry, but helicopters are a legitimate form of travel for people who can afford them. They are fast, they avoid traffic jams, and if that is what the Mowbray-Williams family want to use to make their lives easier so they can get from A to B as quickly as possible, all power to them. They can afford it. I feel sorry for the neighbours, I do. I have empathy. I wouldn't want to live next to a property with a chopper that was landing consistently, but nor would I want to live next to a property where the neighbour has a noisy motorbike. And yet - we're not banning noisy motorbikes, are we?  Some noisy motorbikes, by the way, are as noisy as choppers. They can hit 116 decibels, which is pretty much exactly the same as the 118 decibels that you can get if you're standing right next to a chopper landing. And there is no ban on those noisy motorbikes, is there? There's no council limit on how many times your neighbour can use one of them, there's no council saying: "Oh, you can use it 10 times a month, but that's it, no more." So why are we doing the same with the chopper? I can't help but feel that some of this anti-chopper sentiment is coming from an anti-rich person place, and we need to get over that.  Cause we are lucky, actually, that the Mowbrays have chosen to live in New Zealand. These people are gangster rich, they can live anywhere in the world, and yet they're living here in New Zealand. They're living in Auckland, they're providing work for the people who work in their household, they are paying their mega-dollar taxes into our country, they are pumping money into this economy. Let's not make it harder for people like that. Let's not make it easier for people like that to leave this country by getting weird about helicopters. LISTEN ABOVE Wed, 02 Jul 2025 07:35:29 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-do-we-need-the-government-to-help-fund-wegovy/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-do-we-need-the-government-to-help-fund-wegovy/ From today, Wegovy is available on our shelves so you can get skinny like Oprah, if you want. But it'll cost you - $500 per month. Which is unaffordable for most people, prompting a debate over whether the Government should fund it to reduce obesity and safe money on obesity-related illnesses and injuries. Now on principle, this is the kind of thing I'm a fan of - a bit of money upfront to save lots of money later. But unfortunately, as it stands, this wouldn't be an example of saving money. If we were funding Wegovy like they do in the UK, we'd fund it for people with a BMI over 30. In New Zealand, that is a staggering 1.5 million adults, apparently. If every one of those adults cost $500 per month, that would cost $7.5 billion per year - but it would only save $2 billion a year in obesity-related healthcare costs. Now, that's only measuring health costs directly related to obesity. As we know, carrying too much weight makes you prone to illness, which means you take more days off work, making you less productive. So you could also add in the cost of lost productivity across the workforce. That's around $8 billion, so that takes the cost of obesity to $9.5 billion. But measuring productivity is a guessing game - so you're paying $7.5 billion to maybe save $9.5 billion. Which isn't enough of a saving to take that punt on. And then you need to factor in that for a lot of people, Wegovy only works while you're on it. When you're off it, you'll start putting the weight back on. So you might fund it for a lot of people, only to end up paying the cost of obesity-related illnesses later on. Having said that, that's not measuring the cost of a life. We fund a lot of drugs just to keep people alive, so maybe we should fund this to keep people alive. The good news is - Wegovy comes off its patent in January. Which means copy-cats will be made for much, much cheaper. Which might change the maths, but for now, if you’re giving it to everyone who might need it, the cost would simply be too much to justify. LISTEN ABOVE Tue, 01 Jul 2025 05:04:47 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-why-does-it-take-so-long-for-good-ideas-to-become-law/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-why-does-it-take-so-long-for-good-ideas-to-become-law/ Anyone out there, hands up, who doesn't agree with the Justice Minister's plan to introduce harsher punishments for people who assault first responders? I feel like this is a complete no-brainer. I mean, there are some out there who would argue that no assault is acceptable at all and that if you create two tiers of punishment where you've got the police officers on one level and then the normal humans on another - what you're saying is that some assaults are more acceptable than others. And that's a fair argument to make, but I think reality has a role to play here, and the reality is different, isn't it? The reality is you and I, regular citizens, can just walk away if we see something happening, if we see there's somebody who needs a bit of help, but we can see it's not safe - we can just keep on going. First responders can't. For police and ambo workers in the fire service, it is their job to go into those situations that are often quite risky because people are upset or people have been substance abusing or whatever. And having a different level of offense for them is an acknowledgement, I think, that they face greater risk, so they should have greater protection.  Now, obviously, just attaching a higher punishment to it doesn't mean it's necessarily going to deter someone from doing something, especially if they're off their face and they're making bad decisions. But I would be surprised if it doesn't have an effect over time. As the punishments start coming in, I suspect it will have an impact - the impact of making first offenders a no go. I find it hard to believe that anybody would assault an ambulance worker, because, you know, is there anybody who was there to help you more than an ambulance worker? They're not there to arrest you. They're just there to help you. But it happens.  At the last count, there were 12 assaults on ambulance workers every single week, and that was before COVID. So probably like everything since then, I imagine the numbers would have gone up. But here's the question I have about this, right? This is not a new idea.  From what I can see, this idea was first pitched by New Zealand First seven years ago. It got to a second reading, never went any further.  Same as with the coward's punch, which has just been announced today after being first pitched seven years ago. On the face of it, I would say a it's good idea. So why does it take so long for good ideas to become law? LISTEN ABOVE Mon, 30 Jun 2025 07:38:16 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-should-moana-pasifika-be-saved/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-should-moana-pasifika-be-saved/ There’s a strong chance that this has been Moana Pasifika's best and last season in super rugby.  Do you want them to have another one?  And if so, how much should the taxpayer put in to save it?  Would you pay $7million? Because that’s apparently what they’re short.  The Whānau Ora money is gone and it's understood that Sky is pulling its sponsorship of half a million dollars a year.  World rugby also wants to either reduce or completely cut the money it puts in. That’s around $1.7million a year.  So, for a club that costs about 12 m a year to run, it is short around $7million.  My answer to the first question I asked you … is yes. Moana Pasifika should be saved.  There is a very good reason to have a super ruby team dedicated to giving professional opportunities to Tongan and Samoan rugby players.  They were also one of the best success stories of the season.  My answer to the second question is that the taxpayer should pay nothing.   I can almost guarantee there will be a request for taxpayer help, but this is not a taxpayer problem. This is a rugby problem. This is one for NZ rugby and rugby Australia to fix.  They are the ones who own the Super Rugby competition, and the ones who make money off the broadcast deal from it.  I hope they can sort it out though because in a rugby competition that failed to excite people during the regular season, Moana Pasifika were one of the better stories.  Fri, 27 Jun 2025 04:55:41 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-the-moana-pasifika-revelation-could-do-huge-damage/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-the-moana-pasifika-revelation-could-do-huge-damage/ How disappointing is the revelation that Whānau Ora money has been used to fund the Moana Pasifika rugby team?  How disappointing is that? And this is not a criticism of the team. I mean, the team has been one of the rockstar stories of the Super Rugby season. This is about the funding. This is the kind of revelation, I reckon, that does huge damage to public confidence and Government use of taxpayer money. Because this is money that, to our minds, is supposed to be going to some of the most vulnerable people, to helping Māori and Pasifika families with things like health, medical appointments, baby jabs, education, housing, that kind of thing. But instead, we find out it's been going to fund a rugby team for elite athletes - and this has been going on for at least 2 years. One of the outfits that's contracted to spend final order funds, Pacifica Medical Association Group - we're going to call them PMA - has been giving $770,000 a year to Moana Pasifika. Now, if they do it again this year - we haven't got the financials - but if they do it again at the same level, it will total $2.3 million. That's a lot of money. Now, credit where credit is due, credit to the new Whānau Ora minister or to his department. Either of which appears to have already stopped this in its tracks. They've taken the contract off PMA, given it to a new outfit - and that outfit has to abide by a much tighter set of measurements around the spending and the money and a bit more clarity about whether they're getting their bang bang for their buck when they spend the dollars. But once again, even though it has been stopped - and credit where credit is due - taxpayer money has been wasted. And the lesson here, if there is a lesson, is that it is absolutely fine to hand out taxpayer money to a third party. But if you do that, there have got to be rules and there has got to be supervision. Otherwise, money that we all think is going to families who need it could instead be propping up a rugby team. LISTEN ABOVE Thu, 26 Jun 2025 07:34:10 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-the-academics-need-to-harden-up-here/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-the-academics-need-to-harden-up-here/ Have you caught up on the drama between the academics and David Seymour? Can I just respectfully suggest that the academics need to harden up? They are upset because David Seymour has published a 'Victim of the Day' on social media, and he seems to be doing it reasonably regularly. It's featuring academics who are upset about the Regulatory Standards Bill - and then it's mocking them for that. Now, they're not happy. They're accusing him of breaching the Cabinet Manual. They say that his posts are unethical, unprofessional, potentially dangerous to those who are targeted, and that he's trying to silence them. Thereby proving his point that they really are victims, aren't they? Now, I'm surprised at how thin-skinned these academics are. Let's be honest about it, none of us like to be skewered. It can sting. But it kind of comes with the territory, doesn't it? If you are in public, and especially if you choose to put yourself in public - which these academics are doing by choosing to, for example, pen opinion pieces criticizing the bill - then they are inviting a response, and they cannot dictate what that response is. And actually, I could be wrong, but what I've seen doesn't seem that harsh. It just seems like a right of reply, but tongue in cheek.  Context is important here as well, because this David versus academic spat has actually been going on a fair bit. David Seymour, in my personal opinion, has been given a bit of a rough time by some academics - one in particular who I think is the worst offender. She has, in the past, said that she hopes he doesn't have kids, and then called his Government a fascist white supremacist Government, which certainly makes his response look adult. Now, if academics - and I'm not saying it's the same academics here by any stretch - but collectively, if they want to hand it out, they have to also be prepared to suck it up. LISTEN ABOVE Wed, 25 Jun 2025 07:18:35 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-rate-caps-will-only-delay-the-bigger-problems/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-rate-caps-will-only-delay-the-bigger-problems/ I can see that this idea of forcing rate caps on councils is taking off. So can I just express my concerns about this early on? I personally love the idea of stopping councils from continually jacking up what they charge us, but I worry that this is not going to fix the situation, because it's not the actual problem, is it? The actual problem is that councils spend our money on stupid stuff. A la, the light up toilets in Wellington even when they've got no money. Wellington has got no money, but they keep on doing this stuff. So even if you stop them having much money because you put on a rate cap, they will continue to spend the money on the wrong things. A la, Wellington. So what will then happen if you put the rate cap on - is that after years and years and years and years of deferred capital expenditure, the pipes will break down cause Wellington hasn't spent money on them, and the roads will be in disrepair because Wellington hasn't spent money on them, and the buildings will need earthquake upgrades cause Wellington hasn't spent money on them. And then they will say - oh, look at all the trouble we've got. We need more money. And then some Government run by somebody like Grant Robertson will go - yeah, cool, we'll lift the rate cap. And they'll just make up for lost ground and go hell for leather and jack it up. Or what they'll do is for years and years and years and years, they will just run everything on the credit card and then they'll say - oh look, it's a debt crisis. We've got to pay back our debt, we need more money. And some Government run by somebody like Grant Robertson will go - oh yeah, that's cool. Let's lift the rate cap, and then off they go. And they'll just make up for lost ground. See what I mean? It'll make you feel good about it in the short term, but they will get you eventually, because the problem is that they aren't spending money properly - and that is actually what we need to fix here. Now, I don't know how. I think getting rid of some of our councils by canning the regional councils or canning the district councils or canning the local councils or the city councils may help limit the costs. But I'm not sure. Ultimately, I think we just need smarter people on council - and we need to hold their feet to the fire. But as long as you have numpties and council officials who are shady - and you're not watching them - a rate cap will only delay the problem. LISTEN ABOVE Tue, 24 Jun 2025 07:43:16 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-dont-feel-sorry-for-iran-here/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-dont-feel-sorry-for-iran-here/ Well, US certainly ramped things up over the weekend, didn't it? And if you feel like this is an incredibly serious situation right now, you're not wrong, because there are very few examples - if any - of the US involving itself in the Middle East or surrounding areas and making things better. For the most part, it just ends up backfiring or ending badly. I mean, there are some really obvious ways with regards to Iran that this could go badly. First of all - if Iran wasn't making a nuclear weapon, and I have my doubts about that, but if they really weren't, then this may convince them that they really need to get on and make that nuclear weapon because there is only one way to ensure that you don't get bombed by the US, and that is to have a nuclear weapon. This could also incentivize other countries like Russia to give them a nuclear weapon, which has been a threat from Russia in the last few days. This could spiral into some sort of instability in the country if there's a regime change in Iran that is worse than the current one, and that's always possible and often is the case. This could create instability in other parts of the world. If the US gets involved more deeply in Iran and ties itself up there, other countries will have a look at it, see the US is distracted and take their chances in another part of the world. All of that is absolutely fair to be worried about. However, I would like to caution us all against thinking that Iran is some sort of an innocent victim here, which I think is something that we tend to do in this country. We don't like the US meddling. We can see from a distance how bad that is. So we see the US as an aggressor, meddling in another country, and then we feel sorry for that country, for the US coming and bullying them. Do not feel sorry for Iran. Iran are not good guys here. I personally think you'd have to be naïve to believe that they weren't working on a nuke. They've got their facilities underground, for God's sake. What do you think that's for? And they are motivated to have a nuke, as I said before, to avoid exactly this happening with the US bombing them.So they've got the motivation, circumstantially it looks like they were up to something, right? And they are by the way, remember, the ones who supported and funded Hamas, who started this war with Israel in the first place on October 7, 2023. So they are not good guys at all. Now, they probably had this coming actually. The only thing that we can hope for right now is that it ends with this and to be honest, it's probably a long shot. LISTEN ABOVE Mon, 23 Jun 2025 08:04:35 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-scrapping-the-census-was-long-overdue/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-scrapping-the-census-was-long-overdue/ You know what I’m not going to miss? The census. If there anything that showed how bad Governments can be at embracing technology, it was the census. At a time when Governments collect huge amounts of electronic data about us, it seemed ridiculous that they were also asking us to fill out a paper form and send it in. They already know what we’re earning, the IRD has that. They already know how many babies are being born and how many of us are dying and how many of us getting hitched - Births, Deaths and Marriages has that. They already know how many of us are leaving the country and coming into the country, that’s collected too. They know how many one, two or three bedroom houses there are, that’s all collected already.  And yet - they were asking us to tell them that all again on the census form. Which made the exercise a giant waste of money. The last one cost $325 million and the next one was going to cost $400 million. Now I accept that there is information we will lose. Because as far as I know, no Government department collects information on how many languages you speak or what your sexuality is or what your first language is or how many people live in your house. So yes, by scrapping the census, we will end up with an incomplete set of data. But we already have an incomplete set of data because of the huge numbers of us that didn’t fill it in. In 2018, we didn’t count one in six Kiwis. That's not complete at all. So either way, we won't know anything. Except one way was going to cost us $400 million. Scrapping the census was way overdue. LISTEN ABOVE Wed, 18 Jun 2025 05:01:21 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-i-dont-agree-with-acts-new-employment-bill/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-i-dont-agree-with-acts-new-employment-bill/ I'll tell you what I'm gonna be watching with some interest in the next few weeks -  that employment bill that ACT has just introduced to Parliament that would make it a lot easier for employers to fire staff who earn more than $180,000 because those high earning staff would not be able to take personal grievance cases for justified dismissal. Now, I say high earning with air quotes, because while yes, these people do earn a lot more than the average wage, I don't think that they earn so much that they can be considered, I don't know, rich pricks and treated so callously as to simply fire them without them having any recourse. Many of these people, I think, will probably be raising families - because you don't earn $180,000 plus if you're in your early 20s, do you? These are people who are in management, maybe even in upper management, and I'd imagine that they've got families to feed and families to look after, so I imagine these people would be amongst the most stressed if they could just lose their jobs all of a sudden. I think ACT is taking something of a political gamble here, because I would have thought that this is a case of ACT screwing over some of its own voters. Because remember, ACT does well in well-heeled places like Epsom, which is where people earning more than $180,000 a year live. Now, I'm not sure what's made ACT feel like they have to do this, because it's not as if there has been this huge public debate about how people on $180,000 plus have been terrible employees who need to have their employment rights stripped. And if anything, this is just going to provide work for lawyers because people on this kind of money will have the means, and if they have families to feed, the motivation as well, to litigate, and I suspect that they will. So I'm very keen to see if ACT actually goes through with this part of its plan, because from where I'm sitting, this just looks like a really weird idea with more downsides than upsides. LISTEN ABOVE Tue, 17 Jun 2025 07:11:02 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-this-governments-all-talk-bugger-all-action/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-this-governments-all-talk-bugger-all-action/ This morning, the Prime Minister was asked about the 2000 public servants that had lost their jobs. 2000 are out but 64,000 remain. Chris Luxon saw nothing wrong with that.   That right there is part of the reason why this Government is polling so poorly, because it's all talk, isn't it, bugger all action. Now I'm sorry. I realize this is a lot to start the week with - we're starting strident. I don't mean to continue like that - but were you as surprised as I was to hear that we've only cut 2000 public servants? And were you even more surprised that the Prime Minister's explanation is no more than a verbal shrug? This, I think, will be profoundly disappointing to a lot of people who expected this Government to get public spending under control. And cutting public servants is part of getting that spending under control. There is no reason why we have as many public servants as we have today. 63,000 - there is no reason why we have more than double the 30,000 public servants that we had in 2001. Our population hasn't doubled since 2001. It's gone up about 37 percent. If you adjust accordingly, then we should have 41,000 public servants, not 63,000 public servants. Now, I would have expected that the Prime Minister would have a better explanation than simply saying - at least it's not as bad as Labour. Well, maybe so, but I hoped for better. I hoped for a Government that was gonna actually turn this around. Certainly more than a Government that just feels like it's actually Labour dressed in blue clothing. And isn't this just the latest example of talk from this Government that is not being matched by action? They promised to cut spending every year, and they spend more than Grant Robertson. They promise to get on top of debt every year, and they add more to the debt. They promise to stop the race-based policies - and we just keep finding them. They keep waving them through unless we bust them at it. I think this, in part, answers the question that we were asking last week, which is why is it that 3 polls in a row were so tight that it wasn't actually clear if this Government would win an election if an election was held today. This is why they're not brave enough. They should be braver. In fact, if they were braver, they might be more popular. It's worth remembering that for all the hard decisions that were taken by the 4th Labour Government, which is definitely the most transformational that we can think of, right? For all those tough decisions taken in the first 3 years, they actually came back with a bigger majority in 1987. So maybe, you get rewarded for doing what you say you'll do, tough as it may be, rather than just talking tough and then doing very little. LISTEN ABOVE Mon, 16 Jun 2025 07:25:11 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-speed-is-of-the-essence-for-the-air-india-crash-investigators/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-speed-is-of-the-essence-for-the-air-india-crash-investigators/ Let me tell you about my colleague Kylie's reaction to that Air India plane crash last night.  She was in bed. She was playing on her phone as you do, and the news came in at about 9 o'clock.  Immediately, she looked, she suspected it, looked up what kind of plane it was, exactly as she thought: a Boeing.  Then she immediately looked up what plane her 12-year-old daughter is on to Samoa this Sunday —exactly as she expected, a Boeing— and she freaked out.  Now fortunately for her, she's got a partner with common sense, and actually, she herself is reasonably rational, so she's not going to be pulling her daughter off that flight. But she is still feeling incredibly uncomfortable about it.  And look, I don't blame her for that. I would bet that she's not alone in reacting like this.  And just assuming this is a Boeing problem. Truth is, we don't actually know that this is a Boeing problem.  Yes, it was a Boeing plane, but there is a very, very good chance that this is actually a pilot problem because it looks like the pilot may not have extended the wing flaps.  But the trouble for Boeing is it does not have the same benefit of the doubt that a planemaker would normally have with a crash like this because of all of the problems that Boeing has already had in the last 10 years.  Never mind the fact that the problems have been with the 737 narrow-body planes, and this is a 787, which is completely different. Never mind that.   Boeing shares fell immediately, and they have stayed down.  Now, I would say that speed is of the essence here for the people who are doing the investigation with getting those answers out.  These investigators, I understand, have about 30 days under international expectations to issue the preliminary findings, but they should, all things going well, have answers out of that flight data, the flight data recorders within days, if not hours of the crash.  And then I think the sooner that the public are told what has happened, the better for Boeing's sake. And Boeing will be hoping like hell that the answers clear the plane and unfortunately blame the pilot. Fri, 13 Jun 2025 06:07:00 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-can-we-trust-another-word-out-of-neil-quigleys-mouth/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-can-we-trust-another-word-out-of-neil-quigleys-mouth/ I don't enjoy saying what I'm about to say because personally I quite like Neil Quigley, but I think that he needs to quit as the chair of the Reserve Bank - simply because I do not think that we can ever trust a single word that comes out of that man's mouth again as the chair. He has been busted telling not just one, but quite a lot of fibs about Adrian Orr's resignation. So for a start, on the day that Adrian Orr quit, you'll recall Neil Quigley was the one who held the press conference. At the time he said Adrian's resignation was a personal decision. That is clearly not true. Adrian, we now find out, packed a sad, and quit over funding.  Neil Quigley also said that there was nothing that the Government had said in the days before that that caused Adrian to quit. Not true. Adrian and Nicola, and actually Neil himself, had a meeting about the funding 9 days before the resignation. Neil Quigley was also asked whether there were any policy conduct or performance issues which are at the centre of this resignation. He said there are no issues of that type that are behind this resignation. Once again, not true. He was asked what happened because: "Reserve Bank governors don't just up and resign" and he said: "There is a time when you think having achieved what you wanted to achieve, that's enough". Once again, not true. That's not why Adrian quit. Adrian quit because he packed a tantrum because he didn't get enough money. Now, I do not know why Neil Quigley decided that he needed to tell porkies in order to defend Adrian Orr. I mean, I get the feeling that he has spent a great deal of his time, unfortunately for him, trying to manage the tantrums of our former toddler governor, and perhaps he just got into a little bit of a pattern of butt covering for the guy. He has suggested that he was constrained in what he could say by Orr's exit agreement. But in that case, you simply say, look, I can't say much because it's an employment agreement. And I think we all will understand that because we're all employees or employers, and we're all constrained by the same law, so we get it. But he didn't choose to do that, did he? He chose to stand there and fib to us, and that means that next time he's up answering some tough questions, I don't know if we're going to trust him, are we? Already, unfortunately for Neil, he's got quite a big black mark against him. He was part of the money printing team with Adrian Orr that stuffed up the economy, and some already think that that is enough reason to call for him to quit. Never mind the fact that he has now been busted telling straight out porkies in public. So if I was Neil Quigley, he's got two options. He can hang in there and see how it goes, or he can quit while he's still ahead - and I would do the latter. LISTEN ABOVE Thu, 12 Jun 2025 07:01:43 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-groundswell-will-eventually-be-proven-right-about-the-paris-agreement/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-groundswell-will-eventually-be-proven-right-about-the-paris-agreement/ I think in the end, Groundswell is gonna be proven right - but I don't think they're gonna get what they want right now and I don't think they should get what they want right now. Because what they want is for New Zealand to pull out of the Paris Agreement. Now, we cannot pull out of the Paris Agreement. At least, we can't pull out right now, right? We cannot be one of the first to pull out, because the first lot of countries that pull out of the Paris Agreement are going to be the ones who are blamed for destroying the agreement, and they will pay for it reputationally. And frankly, here in New Zealand, we rely way too much on our good guy reputation for tourism and trading and so on to risk being seen to not care about climate change. But I think that eventually we will pull out - or more likely, the agreement will fall apart by itself because it's not working. I mean, just look at the numbers. We are supposed to hit our first significant target - the 2030 target - in five years' time. We're not going to hit it. I can tell you that now, we are not going to hit it in 5 years' time. Neither are a whole bunch of other countries - Argentina, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Turkey, Canada, just go through the list of countries to find how many of them are actually going to hit it. Now when we don't hit it, which is inevitable, we are supposed to fix it up by planting a huge number of trees, and we're only going to be able to do that by paying probably a developing country to plant those trees for us. And the estimated bill for that, as it stands right now, is $23 billion. Now, do you think we're gonna send $23 billion overseas in 2030? No, of course we're not going to. We know that because the climate minister has basically gone around saying that. And even Chlöe Swarbrick knows that this thing is falling apart, because we had her on the show just a few weeks ago and I asked her if the Paris Agreement was going to hold - and she wouldn't say yes, which tells you she already knows. So if Chlöe can see that the thing is gonna fail and Simon Watts is predicting that it's gonna fail, then perhaps we all need to see that it is going to fail at some point and Groundswell will eventually be proven right. LISTEN ABOVE Wed, 11 Jun 2025 07:34:11 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-spare-a-thought-for-aucklanders-today/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-spare-a-thought-for-aucklanders-today/ It is as expected - if our office is anything to go by, Auckland is a miserable town today because the house valuations are out, and they're bad. Just about everyone has jumped on the computer to have a look by now, I'd say, and just about everyone's house has gone backwards. So my house - it's gone down in value by 8 percent. One of the bosses, not too bad, only gone back by 4 percent. I don't think anyone's house has gone up in the office. Someone's house has dropped by $250,000. One colleague, and this colleague is suffering more than anybody else - her house has gone down by 21 percent. That's $1.15 million down to $900,000. That's another $250,000 shaved right off right there. Someone's feeling agitated. I called a real estate agent today to see if it's wider than just our office. They told me, yep - and people are not happy. Another real estate agent reckons he's already fielding calls from buyers who are mid-negotiation, who are now saying they're not gonna lift their offer anymore. They're just gonna leave it right where it is, because look at the valuation that's out today.  Auckland Council says they normally have about 500 people on their website at any one time. When we called, they said they were watching 12,000 people on their website at any one time. As I said yesterday, spare a thought for Auckland. If you have an Aucklander in your life, spare a thought for them because it's a tough day for Auckland today. Because, I mean, we take the mickey out of Auckland, but there is good reason why Auckland feels like this.  Houses in Auckland mean a lot, don't they? I feel like probably more than anywhere else in the country apart from maybe Queenstown and the surrounding area, because houses are expensive in Auckland. Young Aucklanders obsess about it. They scrimp and they save, and they try so bloody hard to get into their first house. It's totally understandable that absolutely no one in this town wants to watch their house then go down in value. But of course, bear in mind, it is slightly irrational. If you are one of these Aucklanders doing this, you are being irrational, you realize that, because you're not suddenly poorer today than you were yesterday, are you? I mean, the value of the thing has not changed overnight. It's simply just been written down. In fact, it was written down a year ago, it's just taken them a year to put it out there. And if you're buying and selling in the same market, it really doesn't matter at all. It's only if you're cashing up to move out of town or to get rid of an investment property or something like that, that this actually matters. Now, I say that knowing that none of that is gonna sink in - we're gonna continue to be irrational because it is all in our heads, isn't it? We feel wealthier when the house is worth more, and that ain't what happened today. LISTEN ABOVE Tue, 10 Jun 2025 07:38:01 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-was-anyone-shocked-by-mark-robinsons-new-zealand-rugby-resignation/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-was-anyone-shocked-by-mark-robinsons-new-zealand-rugby-resignation/ Anyone who thinks that Mark Robinson resigning from New Zealand Rugby today is a shock clearly doesn't follow rugby's dramas with their brain fully turned on. This was not a shock at all. Anyone could see this coming. This was coming the minute that David Kirk took over as the chair. Now, I don't want to be seen to be saying that David Kirk forced him out. It is, in fact, quite possible that Mark Robinson just read the room and left of his own accord first - but it was always going to happen, wasn't it? Because David Kirk is the new broom, and the new broom generally gets rid of things that aren't working. And unfortunately for Mark Robinson, that wasn't working. Now, I've got no hard feelings towards the guy. He seemed like a really easy bloke, but he has not had the most glorious 10 years, has he? When he brought in the Silver Lake deal, which has yet to bear any fruit despite all of the drama it caused - and boy, did it cause drama. He totally stuffed up the Fozzy situation when he tried to fire Fozzy and then didn't fire Fozzy, and then eventually did manage to get rid of Fozzy - but by then, we all felt really bad for Fozzy. And he persisted with the Super Rugby competition that isn't working. All he's really managed to do with it is tinker, and it still isn't really working. The finances are terrible. The game has maybe managed to arrest the decline, but nothing much else - and the rugby community is bruised after that Silver Lake altercation. If there is a lesson here, I reckon it may be that New Zealand rugby might want to replace Mark Robinson with someone who isn't a rugby man, or a rugby woman, whatever. Someone who isn't sentimental about the game, who can look at all of this business with fresh eyes and say: why is that happening? That shouldn't necessarily be happening - and have the courage to change it, because they don't actually care about rugby that much. Someone who can drive the change that rugby needs, because if there's one thing we all agree on, it's that rugby needs change. LISTEN ABOVE Mon, 09 Jun 2025 07:13:16 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-why-is-it-so-hard-to-do-the-obvious-thing/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-why-is-it-so-hard-to-do-the-obvious-thing/ I've been thinking overnight about the news yesterday that a second Christchurch school has decided to put the walls back up in their classrooms and abandon those modern learning barn style spaces that we were doing in favour of going back to the traditional single class.  The school is Shirley Boys High.  And then last year, Rangiora High School did the same thing.  Something that Rangiora High School's principal said struck me.  He said, the results have been a huge shift in engagement, in attendance, in achievement.  It is not what I was expecting. I was expecting a small shift, but it has gone through the roof. It's made a massive difference in everything in the school.  And that reminded me a lot of what the principals and the teachers said after we banned the phones in schools.  Remember that we banned the phones, and suddenly they were saying, well, the difference is huge.  But all we've done in both cases is the obvious thing, isn't it?  I mean, obviously, if you take the phones away from kids, they're gonna be less distracted.  They're gonna learn better, they're gonna talk to each other more, they're gonna play outside more.  And obviously, if you put 30 kids in a room by themselves, there will be less noise than if you have 120 kids in a big space together.  Why is it so hard for us to do the obvious thing?  Why was the Ministry of Education so hellbent on doing the wrong thing?  Because if you listen to educators or everybody else who's involved in this, they will tell you it was virtually impossible to get a school upgrade unless you agreed to take all the walls down and buy in, and yet, obviously it was a really big mistake.  It feels a little bit like the Ministry of Education went through a weird experimental phase that has cost our kids, with everything from classroom styles to weird ways to teach English when they didn't have to do it.  And when common sense would tell you that it wasn't gonna work, why is it so hard when it comes to schooling for us to do the obvious thing?  Fri, 06 Jun 2025 07:08:00 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-the-polls-revealed-how-people-felt-about-the-pay-equity-saga/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-the-polls-revealed-how-people-felt-about-the-pay-equity-saga/ We've had a case of conflicting polls over the last twenty-four hours, with two completely different Governments predicted. But if there's one thing you can take from these polls, which they both agree on, it's that the pay equity revamp hasn’t turned into the circuit breaker that the left clearly thought it was going to be. The polls are almost identical in the proportion of people who oppose the revamp. The One 九一星空无限 poll had 45 percent, the RNZ poll had 43 percent. That is not big. It is absolutely a plurality - in both polls, more people oppose it than support it. I’ve seen polls where 70 percent, 80 percent of people oppose something. Someone pointed out to me the polls that were done after Hekia Parata used Budget 2012 to announce class sizes would change - about 80 percent hated it. So 45 percent is nothing. It certainly isn’t the circuit breaker and make-people-hate-the-Government moment that Labour and the Greens and the unions were hoping it would be. Why? I don’t know. I thought it was a slam dunk for the opposition to run home but maybe people didn’t understand it enough to care. Maybe the Government managed to claw back the narrative when it started properly explaining what it was doing, maybe Labour completely ballsed it up, maybe Andrea Vance distracted everyone by calling female ministers the c-bomb. Or maybe people are just ideologically entrenched and not wanting to oppose anything the Government does because they voted for the Government - and so on. I don’t know. But what is clear is that it’s not the moment it could’ve been - or was expected to be. And the Government has not been damaged by this as badly as it could’ve been. LISTEN ABOVE Wed, 04 Jun 2025 06:02:43 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-i-see-nothings-changed-in-camp-jacinda/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-i-see-nothings-changed-in-camp-jacinda/ Looks like nothing's changed in camp Jacinda, has it? You will get no admission that she and her Government got anything wrong during Covid, from what I can gather. Now, this is my disclaimer - I haven't actually read the entire memoir just yet. But from what I've skim read and from what I've read and heard in the reviews, and what I've read and heard with her interviews promoting the book, if you are looking for her to admit that she got anything wrong at all during Covid, you're not going to find it. The closest thing I found is on page 309, where she admits that she made 'imperfect decisions', but that's really underselling the massive balls-up that was our Covid response, wasn't it? What you get instead is multiple excuses, heaps of verbal fluff to avoid answering hard questions and, regularly, the defence that we saved 20,000 lives. Here's an example - she gave an interview to RNZ's Jessie Mulligan where he asked her about vaccine mandates, which we now know, of course, was a huge mistake that cost people their jobs simply because they wouldn't get the jab in which the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Covid said damaged 'social cohesion'. Would she agree with that, he asked. She said she wouldn't argue with their findings. He then asked her, did vaccine mandates save any lives? She said - she's not the one that can answer that question for you, although apparently she can tell you that she did save 20,000 lives, she just can't talk about this particular instance. And then she goes on to say that the Commission did also say that vaccine mandates were important in areas like healthcare and so on, and we're relatively limited, but again, I won't argue with their findings. So, not a yes, not a no - and definitely not an apology. Now, I don't actually know why I was expecting anything else from her. I mean, this was a feature of Jacinda during Covid.  She would never say she did anything wrong, which is why it got worse and worse as she barrelled full steam ahead in the wrong direction at times - because apparently going full steam ahead in the wrong direction was better than admitting she was headed in the wrong direction. And of course she got things wrong. I mean, anyone would have. She made thousands and thousands of decisions over multiple years. She would 100 percent have got at least one of those decisions wrong, do you not think? It would be nice just to hear her admit it, because I think it would help some of us - and I'm talking about me here - to forgive her. LISTEN ABOVE Tue, 03 Jun 2025 07:32:23 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/heather-du-plessis-allan-seymour-and-peters-are-the-right-men-for-the-job/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/heather-du-plessis-allan-seymour-and-peters-are-the-right-men-for-the-job/ This weekend marks the last day of Winnie and the first day of David Seymour as the Deputy Prime Minister. Now, mostly I don't actually care. I mean, I largely agree with Jim Bolger's assessment and, and obviously, happy 90th birthday to Jim for tomorrow. The role doesn't actually mean very much. It's symbolic. It doesn't carry any particular power other than really just letting you know who's second in command. But it feels like an appropriate time just to take a moment to acknowledge, because we don't do this very often, that it's actually very nice, isn't it, to have both of these two men in government right now, if only to give the Nats a little bit of a push along, you know, to actually do things from time to time. Winston strikes me right now as the right man for the right job for right now. Don't you think? With all this nutty stuff that's going on in the world, his huge previous experience as a foreign minister, I think, is reassuring. I feel like it's not going overboard to say that I trust his instincts in the job. When he gets angry with Israel, you know, it's not for politics, it's not for performance. It's because he's actually angry with Israel. Given his experience, that would be warranted. On David Seymour, if there's one thing that we can truly thank him for right now, it's shifting the Overton window so that we can, and now do debate things like the treaty principles. The Overton window is the available, is the, it covers the stuff that we feel comfortable talking about in the media and in society. He has shifted that, so principles are now firmly within the Overton window and we talk about it, and we should be able to debate it, because they should not be taboo. Things that have as much impact on our economy and our society and our lives as treaty principles, and as on our private property as well, should be up for discussion without critics of those things being labelled racist. And it is squarely because of ACT's policies that those discussion, those discussions are now out in the open. Now, I don't really expect very much to change after the weekend other than maybe we'll see more of both men, more of David Seymour because he'll be the deputy, and more of Winston because he'll not be the deputy, which means that he can act up a little bit, maybe. But either way, I think it's not a bad thing to have both of them in there at the moment, is it? Fri, 30 May 2025 07:00:12 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-theres-a-gloomy-note-in-the-reserve-bank-decision/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-theres-a-gloomy-note-in-the-reserve-bank-decision/ I don't really want to have to start on a bum note, but if there is a thing that we do on the show, it's honesty. So let's be honest about it. What the Reserve Bank decision told you today is how much trouble our economy is in. If you're in business, you already know this and you don't need me to tell you this. I was talking to a couple of CEOs yesterday. They were telling me they cannot see the green shoots - we've been waiting. We were told - survive til '25, we're halfway through and we're still stuffed. Well, let me tell you what we got today. We got a 25 basis point cut. We needed 50 percent because that OCR is still too high. It's now sitting at 3.25 percent.  It's probably actively still dampening our economic growth because I think the consensus is that 3 is neutral, and we're not there yet. But they could not give us a bigger cut today. And even they must realize how much damage they're doing, because they themselves have admitted that the economy is even more stuffed than they thought it was as recently as February, when they last met. Back in February, they predicted that in the first quarter of this year, we would have seen growth of 0.6 percent. They have revised that down to 0.4. This quarter that we're in right now, they forecast that we would be growing at 0.6 percent. They just halved that to 0.3 percent.  Next quarter, they thought would be 0.5 percent. They've taken that down to 0.2 percent. That's not good. That's bad. And now, why couldn't they give us a bigger cut to help us along? Because they might set off inflation again if they do. We just saw a rise in inflation the other day, and there is potential for it to keep on creeping up. We've got dairy prices going up, we've got electricity prices going up, we've got rates going up - I could go on and on and on. The Budget that we just had last week is not super deflationary, is it? And their job at the Reserve Bank, remember, is not to help the economy grow. That is not their job. Their job is to contain inflation, and it's kind of borderline, and they can't take any chances there. Could we have a touch of the old stagflation back? No growth, prices going up? Feels a bit like that's a risk at the moment, isn't it? Now, I hope not, but 'I hope' is not a strategy. And yet, what else have we got left when even the Reserve Bank can't get out of the economy's way? LISTEN ABOVE Wed, 28 May 2025 07:23:15 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-winstons-rejection-of-chippy-is-more-significant-than-we-realise/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-winstons-rejection-of-chippy-is-more-significant-than-we-realise/ I think Winston Peters ruling out ever going into coalition with Chippy after the next election is actually more significant than many people will realize. Because Winnie was actually Chippy's only credible path back to being prime minister again. Without Winnie, Chippy is completely stuffed, because the alternatives are not real options. The alternatives are: One - being in a coalition with a couple of loony parties, which centre voters are absolutely not going to go for. So you can forget about that. The other is that Labour is returned as a majority Government again, which is, after what happened last time, not going to happen for a very long time again. So basically, there is no way back for Chippy. He will not be Prime Minister after 2026, if ever. Now a lot of people would say to me at this juncture - well of course not, National were always going to win the next election anyway, so this is just a completely spurious argument. But I would say to you is - Labour's chances are actually a little bit better than you might think, because what we have right now is hardly a wildly popular Government. These guys were elected, remember, telling us they were going to turn this economy around. 18 months later, they have not turned this economy around. 18 months later, we are still in the economic doldrums. We are yet to see a vision, economically, from the coalition Government, the right track, wrong track indicator that comes out in multiple polls now is heavily negative for this Government. Thousands of people are voting with their feet and leaving the country altogether.  People vote with their hip pocket, right? Forget about everything else. If you just look at the economy, that is your greatest determiner of what happens at the election. People vote with their hip pocket - and right now, the hip pocket is suffering, it is not looking good for the economy. But also, there should be a target right now on Chippy's back in Labour, because Winnie's problem is not with Labour. Winnie's problem is with Chris Hipkins, which means a different leader and Winston Peters is back in the game as a possibility for Labour. Now that requires Labour to roll Chris Hipkins and then their chances are good again. However, that requires Labour actually realizing that they need Winston Peters to form a coalition Government after 2026 - and that requires them also realizing there is no way they can coalesce with the Māori Party because most voters are allergic to the shenanigans that that party get up to. But I don't think Labour is smart enough to realize that yet, do you? LISTEN ABOVE Tue, 27 May 2025 07:22:50 Z /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-the-government-needs-to-get-out-of-the-retailers-way/ /on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/opinion/perspective-with-heather-du-plessis-allan-the-government-needs-to-get-out-of-the-retailers-way/ I totally understand that retailers want an urgent meeting with the Police Minister. This is over the revelation that police aren't bothering to investigate shoplifting below $500 bucks anymore. They're clearly worried, because what's happened is there's been a revelation from a memo that was sent to police staff a couple of months ago, saying that from now on, across all districts, cops will no longer investigate theft and fraud below a certain value. General theft - anything below $200, not investigating. Petrol drive-offs - anything below $150, not investigating. Shoplifting - anything below $500, not investigating.  Fraud - as in paywave fraud, online fraud, scams, anything below $1000 and then all other fraud - anything below $500, cops aren't turning up. And that is, by the way, regardless of whether you have lines of inquiry. So even if you know who nicked the stuff, even if you can tell them where the stuff is, they're not going to investigate. Now, it's totally understandable for retailers to want an urgent meeting on this, because this has probably come as something of a shock. But also, this is the reality, isn't it? There are not enough police to deal with all the crime in the country. We know that. It's not really even a total surprise when you think about how many stories you've heard about people who go to the police, tell the police exactly where the bike is, where the police can go and find it because it's been nicked, and the police won't go and get it. But, this is gonna be a problem, isn't it? When the thieves start finding out about this stuff - cause they may be criminals, but they're not always stupid - they know what they can get away with scot-free. And that is why so many of them just ended up brazenly pushing those loaded trolleys out of the supermarkets for a while there, cause they knew nothing was gonna happen to them. I suspect the same thing is gonna happen once they figure out what the thresholds are here. And if this is the reality that we now live in, then I think the only solution to this is for the Government to get out of the way of retailers helping themselves.  They need to let the supermarkets use that facial recognition technology they want to use, so they can stop people from coming in and committing the crime. They need to pass the citizen's arrests law to allow the retailers and the security guards themselves to stop the criminals getting away with this stuff. Because frankly, if the cops can't help - and clearly there aren't enough of them to help - then the retailers need the tools to be able to help themselves. Mon, 26 May 2025 06:00:31 Z