Andrew Dickens Afternoons

It's nice to be on air again after another depressing week hearing New Zealand media, politicians and talkback callers give us their wisdom over how to solve the housing crisis.
In simple terms houses cost too much in this country. Currently seven times median income. 10 years ago they were five times the median income. The international benchmark is three times median income.
A house in New Zealand is twice as expensive as anywhere else in the world. That's not a good look.
But let's also remember that people have been prepared to pay twice the price - because we have no choice.
Most markets correct themselves when the price becomes too high and the market realises they don't need to pay that. But when it comes to houses you do. Because everyone needs a roof over their head. And the roof needs to be where a job is.
This has been a multi-generational planning failure of epic proportions based on some 1930s utopian view that every New Zealander can live in their five bedroom, quarter acre, pavlova paradise.
So now we're here what do we do? We moan and wail at the government to do something about the fact we can't house ourselves.
So government after government has tried to put a cap on prices by penalising demand with taxes like the brightline test, or limiting who can buy with LVR rules. Bad people for wanting to buy houses.
Anecdotally we've heard that the first week has seem an abrupt decrease in sales and inquiries from investors but let's be honest, these guys needed a break, it's been a busy summer. They'll be back because nothing fundamentally has changed except on the edges of their margins.
What will the new tax do? Will it provide cheap affordable homes? No. Will it stagnate an already suffering economy? Yes. Will it halt price growth? Yes. But only temporarily until investors remember that the upside still exists. Happens every time.
Will it mean a rise in rents? Yes. If the government increases costs then that's passed on to the people paying for the service.
And this is the greatest crime to me. Forget first home buyers. The most vulnerable in our housing market are those who will never have enough money to buy a house and depend on the money bag investors to let them rent a house from them
Most importantly, will it build new houses? No. Not at all.
Which is why I was amazed how little attention was paid to the one part of the proposal which might create a house or two. The government money to be invested to build infrastructure.
Because houses are not built on land. They are built on pipes and wires and roads and shops and service stations and transportation routes and bus services.
One expert spoken to by ZB Drive on the day casually said that the government probably needs to spend 10 times that amount. Unless of course you want be like Wellington where you build more and more houses until the streets explode in a fountain of poo. Forget taxes. Build infrastructure. You'll never regret it.
And one final note. Why is the housing crisis solely the government’s problem? They are bit players in this market compared to the buyers, the developers and the builders. The private sector has failed to meet the demand of the market.
This was driven home by the news that Carter Holt Harvey is to stop providing timber to the independent wholesalers preferring to supply big players like Fletchers.
Why? They underestimated the demand for wide timbers used in multi-storeyed developments.
They've run out of wood. In a country with the second largest forest plantation in the Southern Hemisphere.
It beggars belief.
If the people who provider the wood can't keep up with the property market, then what hope is there for the amateurs in the government?

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It’s D-day for bubbles.  
Is it really?  Or will it be a day where there is an announcement about a future announcement as is the Governments favoured method of operation?
If they offer not one concrete proposal or date or destination there will be considerable anger amongst the tourism industry and opponents of the government at large.  
This bubble debate has been annoying as it seems to have been going on forever - which it has.  
Weeks after we first emerged from lockdown, there were people advocating for an opening of our borders.  With 20/20 hindsight we realise now how misguided those calls were. In June and July last year we had no idea about just how widespread and rampant the pandemic was going to be.
But the calls were understandable because the impacts on the tourism, hospitality and educational sectors have been so dramatic and specific.  
Since then the issue has raised it’s head each month, only to be submerged under another break out of infection, governmental pussy footing or a political power play by Australia.  
Make no mistake the travel bubble has been used by Australia as a political pawn a number of times. Angered by our anger at their Kiwi deportation policy and other issues, the Aussies have broken off talks a number of times.    
They are perfectly aware that this bubble is more important to us than them.  Their economy is not hostage to tourism and education in the way that ours is.  We need Aussies to come skiing in Queenstown this winter while they can do without a Kiwi shopping trip to David Jones in Melbourne.  
But now with nine months under our belt and both Australia and New Zealand approaching some stability and expertise about handling outbreaks, it’s time for movement. Five weeks since a community case in Melbourne, you’d think it would not be outside the governments parameters to open up in three weeks time. That's two months of infection cycles done and dusted. 
A simple step would be to allow travel bubbles with Covid free islands to allow seasonal workers in to help horticulture.  
But a word of warning.  Throughout our bubble debates people claim that billions of dollars would resume it’s flow into our economy, but that presumes that we will return to our previous levels of tourism and international students.  And I’m not sure if that demand exists. Well, certainly not to the level before the pandemic. 
A return airfare to Australia is more than twice what it was bin the days of cheap travel we enjoyed in 2019. 
We need the bubble as a first step to normality. The government needs to allow a bubble because their caution is becoming increasingly toxic to their popularity.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It’s D-day for bubbles.  
Is it really?  Or will it be a day where there is an announcement about a future announcement as is the Governments favoured method of operation?
If they offer not one concrete proposal or date or destination there will be considerable anger amongst the tourism industry and opponents of the government at large.  
This bubble debate has been annoying as it seems to have been going on forever - which it has.  
Weeks after we first emerged from lockdown, there were people advocating for an opening of our borders.  With 20/20 hindsight we realise now how misguided those calls were. In June and July last year we had no idea about just how widespread and rampant the pandemic was going to be.
But the calls were understandable because the impacts on the tourism, hospitality and educational sectors have been so dramatic and specific.  
Since then the issue has raised it’s head each month, only to be submerged under another break out of infection, governmental pussy footing or a political power play by Australia.  
Make no mistake the travel bubble has been used by Australia as a political pawn a number of times. Angered by our anger at their Kiwi deportation policy and other issues, the Aussies have broken off talks a number of times.    
They are perfectly aware that this bubble is more important to us than them.  Their economy is not hostage to tourism and education in the way that ours is.  We need Aussies to come skiing in Queenstown this winter while they can do without a Kiwi shopping trip to David Jones in Melbourne.  
But now with nine months under our belt and both Australia and New Zealand approaching some stability and expertise about handling outbreaks, it’s time for movement. Five weeks since a community case in Melbourne, you’d think it would not be outside the governments parameters to open up in three weeks time. That's two months of infection cycles done and dusted. 
A simple step would be to allow travel bubbles with Covid free islands to allow seasonal workers in to help horticulture.  
But a word of warning.  Throughout our bubble debates people claim that billions of dollars would resume it’s flow into our economy, but that presumes that we will return to our previous levels of tourism and international students.  And I’m not sure if that demand exists. Well, certainly not to the level before the pandemic. 
A return airfare to Australia is more than twice what it was bin the days of cheap travel we enjoyed in 2019. 
We need the bubble as a first step to normality. The government needs to allow a bubble because their caution is becoming increasingly toxic to their popularity.

It’s D-day for bubbles.  
Is it really?  Or will it be a day where there is an announcement about a future announcement as is the Governments favoured method of operation?
If they offer not one concrete proposal or date or destination there will be considerable anger amongst the tourism industry and opponents of the government at large.  
This bubble debate has been annoying as it seems to have been going on forever - which it has.  
Weeks after we first emerged from lockdown, there were people advocating for an opening of our borders.  With 20/20 hindsight we realise now how misguided those calls were. In June and July last year we had no idea about just how widespread and rampant the pandemic was going to be.
But the calls were understandable because the impacts on the tourism, hospitality and educational sectors have been so dramatic and specific.  
Since then the issue has raised it’s head each month, only to be submerged under another break out of infection, governmental pussy footing or a political power play by Australia.  
Make no mistake the travel bubble has been used by Australia as a political pawn a number of times. Angered by our anger at their Kiwi deportation policy and other issues, the Aussies have broken off talks a number of times.    
They are perfectly aware that this bubble is more important to us than them.  Their economy is not hostage to tourism and education in the way that ours is.  We need Aussies to come skiing in Queenstown this winter while they can do without a Kiwi shopping trip to David Jones in Melbourne.  
But now with nine months under our belt and both Australia and New Zealand approaching some stability and expertise about handling outbreaks, it’s time for movement. Five weeks since a community case in Melbourne, you’d think it would not be outside the governments parameters to open up in three weeks time. That's two months of infection cycles done and dusted. 
A simple step would be to allow travel bubbles with Covid free islands to allow seasonal workers in to help horticulture.  
But a word of warning.  Throughout our bubble debates people claim that billions of dollars would resume it’s flow into our economy, but that presumes that we will return to our previous levels of tourism and international students.  And I’m not sure if that demand exists. Well, certainly not to the level before the pandemic. 
A return airfare to Australia is more than twice what it was bin the days of cheap travel we enjoyed in 2019. 
We need the bubble as a first step to normality. The government needs to allow a bubble because their caution is becoming increasingly toxic to their popularity.

Engineers want to build an underground lunar ark, filled with millions of seed, spore, sperm and egg samples from Earth's species, hidden in a network of tubes on the moon to provide a genetic backup for the planet in the event of a doomsday scenario.
Scientists from the University of Arizona have proposed an ark, dubbed a "modern global insurance policy" for 6.7 million species from Earth, cryogenically preserved and hidden inside a series of caves and tunnels under the moon's surface.
They said the vault could protect the genetic materials in the event of "total annihilation of Earth" which would be triggered by a major drop in biodiversity -- but any move to build such a bunker is a long way off.
"Earth is naturally a volatile environment," researcher Jekan Thanga, a professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering in the University of Arizona College of Engineering, said in a statement.
"As humans, we had a close call about 75,000 years ago with the Toba supervolcanic eruption, which caused a 1,000-year cooling period and, according to some, aligns with an estimated drop in human diversity. Because human civilization has such a large footprint, if it were to collapse, that could have a negative cascading effect on the rest of the planet."
Similar "doomsday vaults" exist on Earth: The Global Seed Vault, home to just under 1 million seed samples, is located on a remote island in Svalbard, an archipelago located between Norway and the North Pole.
In a paper presented earlier this month, the team from the University of Arizona think their concept could preserve life from Earth in the event of destruction of the planet we call home.
The researchers said the project is dependent on advancements in cryo-robotics technology -- to be cryopreserved, the seeds must be cooled to minus 292 Fahrenheit, while stem cells must be stored at minus 320 Fahrenheit. But the team says that at such temperatures, metal parts of the base could freeze, jam or cold-weld together.
Scientists also still don't understand how a lack of gravity could affect preserved seeds, or how to communicate with an Earth base.
Experts uncovered a network of some 200 lava tubes beneath the surface of the moon in 2013, which had formed when streams of lava melted through soft rock to form underground tunnels billions of years ago.
Scientists think the tubes -- 100 meters (328 feet) in diameter -- could provide the perfect shelter for the precious cargo, protecting it from solar radiation, surface temperature changes and micrometeorites.
Powered by solar panels, the underground ark would be accessed by elevator shafts, which would lead to a facility storing cryogenic preservation modules.
Scientists say that 250 rocket launches would be required to transport about 50 samples from each of 6.7 million species to the moon.
Some construction is already scheduled to take place on the moon for another project.
Last week, China and Russia agreed to jointly construct a lunar space station, which will be "open to all countries."
text by Amy Woodyatt, CNN

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I spent the weekend in Wellington and it was fabulous. 
I went for my son’s 22nd birthday using the tickets I bought for his 21st birthday that I couldn’t use because some sort of virus was floating around. 
I arrived on Friday and had a good shop and a great dinner at Havana where the octopus and the gnocchi are to die for. 
Saturday was a blinder of a day.  The clearest blue with a steady Northerly.  You wonder why they don’t have the America’s Cup in the capital if you’ve got a problem with wind. 
People were buzzing around doing stuff as only Wellington can on a sunny Sunday.  Maybe it’s the promise of beautiful weather, or the fact that so many public servants are let out of the state architect designed concrete prison cells to do what they want, but Wellington crackles on a Saturday morning the way few places do. 
We enjoyed the waterfront, went to Makara, had fish and chips on the South Coast as the sun went down behind the South Island. 
And I thought to myself, who said Wellington was dying? Who said it had lost it’s mojo?  That’d be John Key and our own Heather Du Plessis Allen just a few weeks ago and a host of other commentators. 
No, Wellington is exactly the same as it’s always been.  And that’s it’s problem. 
I lived in Wellington in the mid-eighties.  The motorway and roading system is virtually unchanged. The water infrastructure unchanged. Yet the population has grown.  The city is penned in by hills and so to cope the buildings have gone up. 
But the base the city is built on is 100 years old.  It’s right there on the Mount Vic tunnel.  Built in 1931 with plans for 2 more lanes in a sister tunnel.  90 years later nothing. 
The problem is not this bunch of local politicians, or the previous bunch or the bunch before that. 
The problem is the model which is why nearly every city and town in New Zealand face the same fate as our failing cities. 
I was reminded of that when commissioners in Tauranga took a look at the books and wondered how on earth you run a city on this and promptly suggested a 22 per cent rate rise. 
For generations out cities bodies have been funded by a tax on households, while central government taxes individuals. That means the local bodies are woefully underfunded compared to central government. 
For example the average Auckland rates bill for 2020, according to the Taxpayers Union last December, was just under $3500. But in my household we have three taxpayers living in the household paying nearly 30 times that in tax. 
We give councils a pittance to deal with our roads, our water, our rubbish, and our excrement - the most important things needed to survive - while Central government gets a fortune to pay for our teachers, doctors, cops, soldiers and bureaucrats. 
We choose our local leaders based on who will cost us the least by promising the smallest rate increases.  It’s self-fulfilling .
As long as we give them peanuts, and we elect monkeys, our cities and towns will continue to be circuses. Enjoy the show.

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Let’s try this again - take two on 2021 - because we screwed the first take up. 
I had high hopes for 2021.  Particularly when the first three day lockdown had the ambition of being a short sharp surgical shock.   
I was hoping that the systems and procedures had been sharpened over the previous year to a point where bringing the economy to a screeching halt was unnecessary 
I was thinking that this was the start of a new normal.  A lockdown that honed in on the viral outbreak like a laser guided missile, quickly identifying those infected and isolating them, cutting any spread before it happened. 
But I was wrong. We missed three viral vectors. Three people who through either ignorance or disobedience allowed the chance of the virus spreading to a wider community. 
Faced with learning on a Saturday afternoon that an infected person had been at the gym, the authorities panicked that the gym goers were heading out for a Saturday night to super spread Covid.  So the entire country was punished. 
I felt for everyone.  But it was deeply sad for the sports fans and art deco festival goers and all the ancillary business outside of Auckland that were closed even though the chances of inter region spread seemed negligible. 
So here we are back at the beginning and time for a Take Two on 2021. 
Here’s what I hoped I learnt.  
Firstly, the Covid App does work but only if the population uses it. It was the Covid App that alerted the authorities that case M had been to the gym and MIT within minutes of discovering he was positive. Without it would we have known.  Honestly, if you hate lockdowns, use the app. 
But the Covid app missed the walking ladies and the lodger.  Flat out fibs to contact tracers can’t be tolerated. It is an argument for an amnesty if contact tracing unveils dodgy behaviour. If people aren’t afraid of consequences they will tell the truth.  One undisclosed tenant is not worth a nationwide lockdown. 
I’ve learnt that this government is exhausted and holding the Covid card too tight to it’s chest. Too often we’re told things are tickety-boo when they’re not. Now we find vaccine press releases branded with Labour Party branding when this is not a political issue. This is no longer an emergency.  It’s becoming even more political than it’s already been. 
And I’ve come to the view that it’s time for the Prime Minister to step aside from fronting the Covid battle. There are too many other issues that are being put on a back burner that we will pay for for generations.  Whether it’s housing, child poverty or infrastructure.  The PM needs to get back to knitting.  
Watching Kiri Allan fronting the tsunami press conference I realised how the Prime Minister has hogged the issue.  When asked for science advice, Allan deferred to a scientist.  When asked about Civil Defence decisions, Allan deferred to Roger Ball.  It looked so easy 
The Prime Minister likes to think she has all the answers on Covid.  She does not and it’s becoming increasingly obvious.   
It’s been a long haul.  Time to delegate and move onto the next stage. So let’s go - 2021, Take Two.

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As I watch the news last night I wondered how the young lad at the centre feels as event after dream after hope gets cancelled.  
I wonder why the link between his family and the originally infected family was never revealed to the contact tracers.  Did they know what they did was wrong? Was there some link between the families so powerful it made them forget the rules?  Or did they not know the rules in the first place?
I wonder about the motivations of the apologists. The counsellor claiming the messages of a year have gone past people because there are 20 languages in South Auckland.  We don’t have enough translators.  How on earth do any of these New Zealand citizens and resident survive if they don’t understand a rule as simple as stay at home if you’re sick?  Or stay at home if you’ve had a Covid test? Don’t visit another family under Level 3?
I also wonder how every other denier and complacent feels. They fuel a climate of dissent and lack of responsibility that results in greater anarchy 
Day in and day out we hear a constant buzz of disrespect of authority.  The government’s useless.  The goverment’s incompetent. The government’s lazy.   Ashley’s slack.  The contact tracing app doesn’t work.  Covid’s just another flu.  Covid is a myth.  Vaccines kill.  Police don’t arrest anyone any more.  
There is a sufficient underbelly of people in this country who don’t care about the rules because they’ve been set by people they don’t respect. 
The government and the system has it faults but it’s biggest weakness is the population itself.
All New Zealanders had to do was assume some personal responsibility to help everyone. Too many of us can’t do that.  
I don’t know why. It’s either because we’re selfish, immature, short sighted or stupid. You choose.

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An Alaska woman had the scare of a lifetime when using an outhouse in the backcountry and she was attacked by a bear, from below.
"I got out there and sat down on the toilet and immediately something bit my butt right as I sat down," Shannon Stevens told The Associated Press on Thursday. "I jumped up and I screamed when it happened."
Stevens, her brother Erik and his girlfriend had taken snowmobiles into the wilderness Feb. 13 to stay at his yurt, located about 20 miles northwest of Haines, in southeast Alaska.
Her brother heard the screaming and went out to the outhouse, about 150 feet (45.72 meters) away from the yurt. There, he found Shannon tending to her wound. They at first thought she had been bitten by a squirrel or a mink, or something small.
Erik had brought his headlamp with him to see what it was.
"I opened the toilet seat and there's just a bear face just right there at the level of the toilet seat, just looking right back up through the hole, right at me," he said.
"I just shut the lid as fast as I could. I said, 'There's a bear down there, we got to get out of here now,'" he said. "And we ran back to the yurt as fast as we could."
Once safely inside, they treated Shannon with a first aid kit. They determined it wasn't that serious, but they would head to Haines if it worsened.
"It was bleeding, but it wasn't super bad," Shannon said.
The next morning, they found bear tracks all over the property, but the bear had left the area. "You could see them across the snow, coming up to the side of the outhouse," she said.
They figure the bear got inside the outhouse through an opening at the bottom of the back door.
"I expect it's probably not that bad of a little den in the winter," Shannon said.
Alaska Department of Fish and Game Wildlife Management Biologist Carl Koch suspects it was a black bear based upon photos of the tracks he saw and the fact that a neighbor living about a half-mile away sent him a photo of a black bear on her property two days later.
That homeowner yelled at the bear but it didn't react. It also didn't approach her but lumbered about its business, like it was in a walking hibernation mode.
Even though it's winter, Koch said they get calls all year round about bears being out.
And 2020 was a record year for general bear problems in the Haines area. Reasons for that, he said, could include the fact it was a poor salmon run year combined with a mediocre berry crop. "It is also possible a bear couldn't put on enough fat when they go in the den, that they might be out and about more often or earlier," he said.
Koch suspects Shannon's wound was caused by the bear swatting at her with a paw rather than being bitten. Either way, the location might be a first.
"As far as getting swatted on the butt when you're sitting down in winter, she could be the only person on Earth that this has ever happened to, for all I know," Koch said.
No matter the season, Erik says he'll carry bear spray with him all the time when going into the backcountry, and Shannon plans to change one behavior as well.
"I'm just going to be better about looking inside the toilet before sitting down, for sure," she said.

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Firstly today my respects to Christchurch.  10 long years. 
I was at the first memorial in March of 2011, one month after the event.  Prince William was there and spoke.  He told tens of thousands of Cantabrians this: "My grandmother once said, that grief is the price we pay for love. Here today, we love and we grieve." 
I saw a young lad who had lost his Mum uncontrollably sobbing.   
Towards the end of the service we looked towards the Port Hills and saw hundreds of first responders who walked right across Hagley Park to join us and they were given a standing ovation. 
It was a blue sky day and a kite was in the air saying “Rise Up Christchurch”. 
I’m sure all these sentiments will be present today.  10 years is no time at all really. 
But today will also see the Australian cricket side play against the Blackcaps in Hagley Park. Our best venue that was born out of the quake which also shows you how far we’ve come. 
On the Covid front we have a possible change from Level 2 to 1 for Auckland.  I think this is on the cards.  Chief smarty pants and scaredy cat Professor Michael Baker thinks it can happen so that’s a good sign.
No one wants this more than Joseph Parker and Junior Fa who have their living on the line this Friday at Spark Arena.  No Level 1, no fight. 
Meanwhile, National’s Covid spokesman Chris Bishop has launched the biggest back of an envelope reckon of an idea when he suggested we construct a dedicated MIQ facility. 
He’s proposed land near the airport. Well, Ihumātao shows you how difficult that is and how expensive.  Cabins with individual air con filtration to be built.  Basing the costs on you basic prison build, you’re talking a billion. 
All to stop leaks out of MIQ, of which there have been none.  We’ve had returnees return to their homes after MIQ and then the virus flare up again and that’s affected Auckland the most because, newflash, more people live in Auckland.   
This is not an Auckland problem.  May I remind you that our biggest outbreaks are the Bluff Wedding Cluster and the greatest death toll was in Christchurch. 
And this all as we commence a vaccination regime for MIQ workers that will further reduce the risk. 
We’ve come too far and learnt to much to be subjected to half thought out reckons. 

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