Andrew Dickens Afternoons

Insurance Australia Group - New Zealand's largest general insurer - says its customers who live in areas prone to natural disasters and severe weather may have to pay more for insurance.
From July 1 the insurer will take more account of risk in its premiums and roll out changes to all its brands as well as the insurance its sells through bank ASB, BNZ, The Co-Operative Bank and Westpac.
Last year it changed the premiums for its AMI and State Insurance customers to take into account risk from earthquakes and floods with some areas seeing an average premium increase of $91 and others an average cut of $54.
But now the insurer plans to roll out its risk-based pricing across the board for all its home and contents policies. This follows a similar move by Tower Insurance in April 2018.
Kevin Hughes, executive general manager customers and consumer at IAG, said the change was being made because it needed to "reflect the level of risk and costs associated with providing insurance cover, including reinsurance costs."
"Every customer and every property is different and so every policy will be affected differently, whether that be a price increase or decrease.
Hughes said New Zealand's environmental risks had evolved over the past few years.
"We need to take more account of those risks, so we can continue to be there for our customers across New Zealand when misfortune strikes."
Hughes said it realised the changes would be a challenge for some customers.
"We will work through this with them.
"There are a range of options available to customers to make this easier, including taking a higher excess or adjusting the frequency of payments to suit them.
"We will continue to provide solutions and work to make insurance as affordable as possible."
The insurance giant came under fire last month over its moves in Wellington with some claiming it had pulled out of the market.
IAG said it was still operating in Wellington but had changed its focus to servicing existing customers rather than new customers.
Hughes said last month it had taken a prudent approach to insurance in Wellington in the wake of the Kaikoura quakes but as part of an ongoing review process, IAG had decided to review its position regarding both new and existing customers.
"The feedback from our existing customers is they want us to be there for them," he said.
"As such our focus has been to broaden our support and to protect existing customers. This includes making sure insurance is available as the circumstances of our customers change. For example, when an existing customer buys a new home, we want to ensure we are able to provide insurance coverage for their new property and that we're there for them if they need to make a claim," he added.
IAG has around 46 per cent of the New Zealand general insurance market.
The IAG changes come at the same time as the Earthquake Commission is changing its cover.
From 1 July, EQC will pay up to $150,000 plus GST per residential home but will no longer provide cover for contents. Contents insurance cover will fall entirely to private insurers.

Insurance Australia Group - New Zealand's largest general insurer - says its customers who live in areas prone to natural disasters and severe weather may have to pay more for insurance.
From July 1 the insurer will take more account of risk in its premiums and roll out changes to all its brands as well as the insurance its sells through bank ASB, BNZ, The Co-Operative Bank and Westpac.
Last year it changed the premiums for its AMI and State Insurance customers to take into account risk from earthquakes and floods with some areas seeing an average premium increase of $91 and others an average cut of $54.
But now the insurer plans to roll out its risk-based pricing across the board for all its home and contents policies. This follows a similar move by Tower Insurance in April 2018.
Kevin Hughes, executive general manager customers and consumer at IAG, said the change was being made because it needed to "reflect the level of risk and costs associated with providing insurance cover, including reinsurance costs."
"Every customer and every property is different and so every policy will be affected differently, whether that be a price increase or decrease.
Hughes said New Zealand's environmental risks had evolved over the past few years.
"We need to take more account of those risks, so we can continue to be there for our customers across New Zealand when misfortune strikes."
Hughes said it realised the changes would be a challenge for some customers.
"We will work through this with them.
"There are a range of options available to customers to make this easier, including taking a higher excess or adjusting the frequency of payments to suit them.
"We will continue to provide solutions and work to make insurance as affordable as possible."
The insurance giant came under fire last month over its moves in Wellington with some claiming it had pulled out of the market.
IAG said it was still operating in Wellington but had changed its focus to servicing existing customers rather than new customers.
Hughes said last month it had taken a prudent approach to insurance in Wellington in the wake of the Kaikoura quakes but as part of an ongoing review process, IAG had decided to review its position regarding both new and existing customers.
"The feedback from our existing customers is they want us to be there for them," he said.
"As such our focus has been to broaden our support and to protect existing customers. This includes making sure insurance is available as the circumstances of our customers change. For example, when an existing customer buys a new home, we want to ensure we are able to provide insurance coverage for their new property and that we're there for them if they need to make a claim," he added.
IAG has around 46 per cent of the New Zealand general insurance market.
The IAG changes come at the same time as the Earthquake Commission is changing its cover.
From 1 July, EQC will pay up to $150,000 plus GST per residential home but will no longer provide cover for contents. Contents insurance cover will fall entirely to private insurers.

It was sobering yesterday to turn on my phone and see a news alert that eight people had died in a car crash on State highway one at Atiamuri in the middle of the North Island. Sobering because I had driven that very stretch of road not days before.
The scene was reportedly horrific, with two doctors by chance first on the scene. One man received 30 minutes of CPR but still died at the scene. One of the cars had crossed the centre line. An investigation has started as to why?
The Taupo Mayor, David Trewavas, told Mike Hosking this morning, “you come across the mighty Waikato, at Atiamuri you come across a pretty new bridge, come up a double passing lane and around an easy left-hand corner, so what can I say?” You can tell his disbelief. After that description, I know exactly where the accident happened and I’m in disbelief. One of the drivers has made a small, catastrophic mistake.
There’s nothing wrong with the road. Except for the obvious design fault. A fault that for all her own virtue signalling, pregnant pedalling pomp, Julie Anne Genter has correctly identified and the sooner work starts on it the better.
This is a nation whose main highway linking North and South is, for the most part, a winding two-lane, sometimes three-lane, road. Unlike most of the world, we drive on the right side of the car and I wasn’t surprised to hear this happened on a left-hand bend.
Genter wants to put median barriers on the black spots. She’ll get $1.4 billion in the budget to do that. The sooner SH1 gets a basic common sense safety update, the sooner we won’t be ruing the loss of eight lives in one second's worth of inattention
And there’s that word. Budget. Just one month to go until the very first well-being Budget in history and there is a lot in play. Today we started a five-day junior doctors' strike. Five days! They want better hours but the only way they’ll get that is with more doctors which won’t come cheap. Add that to the sector-wide industrial action amongst teachers from early childhood to secondary with all of them putting their hands out for a billion or more. Add that to Chris Hipkins revamp of Tomorrow’s Schools estimated today to cost $2 billion. Add that aged care workers and nurses complaints. Add that to Pharmac dissatisfaction of their drug rationing. Add it all to a raft of funding crises
Boy, there’s a lot on this Government’s plate, some of their own ideological making and some they’ve inherited from the tightwads who underinvested before them. So this Budget is a biggie and can anyone else feel a fiscal hole starting to open up or will Grant Robertson’s Budget Responsibility Rules mean that we’re going to carry on with underpaid people and half-arsed infrastructure, which seems to be the New Zealand way. We'll see. Fascinating times
With all this in play, what is the Leader of the Opposition worried about? Slushies for prison guards, of course. Now maybe a million was too much to spend but in the scheme of things, this was a petty piece of political click bait. At the regional conferences, Simon Bridges has been demanding loyalty and his people have been demanding leadership. Slushies ain't cutting it.
Leave the slushies for your Corrections spokesperson Simon (a guy named David Bennett by the way) and get stuck into the big stuff because you’re starting to appear strangely irrelevant.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

So on Wednesday, I started the show saying that Jacinda Ardern and Emmanuel Macrons little social media summit idea was a good play. After the events of March the 15th and the complicity of social media platforms, I think everyone agrees that something needs to be done so calling the social media gurus to a please explain seems as good a thing as any.
So after my thoughts were published on our social media platforms I was very surprised and slightly horrified to see the outpouring of disdain and negativity towards the idea and most notably the Prime Minister.
“It will achieve nothing other than further the global profile of Princess Jacinda” was the general gist. It’s a stunt. Many took the opportunity to say that she should stay at home and sort out all our domestic problems. And there was the hyperbolic belief that she is a communist who will eventually take all our freedom of speech and this is the start.
It was surprisingly vehement and also quite wrong.
After the shooter used Facebook Live, Australia’s reaction under Scott Morrison was to hastily draw up legislation to restrict such a misuse of social media. Now that was an overreaction and a substantial attack on freedoms.
Our friendly neighbourhood socialist is being far more realistic. Social Media has been allowed to do what it wants for so long now that the genie can’t be put back in the bottle. But we can ask it to behave decently. Ardern and Macron have parlayed our position at the centre of this horrible story to force Zuckerberg to meet and what on earth is wrong with that.
To all those who say it will achieve nothing, I say you’re probably right. But it will achieve more than sitting on our hands waiting for the next massacre, rape and murder to be live-streamed onto your Facebook feed. I didn’t realise you were such surrender monkeys
And to those who harbour such anger at Ardern’s popularity, both here and internationally, all I have to say is grow up and stop snivelling. Honestly, the anti-Jacinda banshees are sounding more cry baby than all the cry baby wailing over Trump.
If you’re so vehemently against this government and its popular leader then you might want to start helping the opposition which is in dire straits. As Matthew Hooten points out today the combined polling of the coalition versus the opposition is now 18 points ahead. There hasn’t been a gap like that since Bill English’s disastrous campaign in 2002.
But when not hating on Jacinda it appears the opposition is hating on Simon Bridges which is helping no-one. This past week Simon Bridges has tabled a members bill to inflation link the tax thresholds. This is a good move. If the government votes it down then they’re anti-tax cuts. This is a good move and yet no-one is talking about it, even National supporters.
You know if you want a change in government then just hating on Jacinda ain’t going to cut it. It’s time you found some love for the party you support.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the eve of Anzac Day, there remains a division of public opinion over the cancellation of multiple events. 
Around the country, 60 events have been cancelled so police can better guard the remaining events in the wake of the Christchurch attacks.
Nearly 70 per cent of Auckland's services have been cut, with only 26 taking place instead of the regular 84.
Former ACT MP Heather Roy told Andrew Dickens that it is "wrong" for the police to have cancelled these events. 
She has launched a petition to share the public's anger, though has only garnered around 2,000 signatures so far. 
"At a timer we should be looking for public unity, for the police to be saying not to go to these events is wrong.”
She says that it is generating fear through the community, and that it goes against what our veterans fought for.
One veteran, Roger, called in to express his annoyance, saying that he has quit his local RSA over what has happened. 
"We don't need the police to march, we don't need a band to march, we've all marched the route before." 
He feels that people should have been given the option to march. 
However, another caller, Kiri, says that we should trust the police. She was from Christchurch who went to Sri Lanka for a short holiday to recover, and ended up being caught up in this weekend's explosions as she was at the airport. 
She says that they are the experts and we should trust their advice. 
"Of course we don't want to do this, but we are living in an unusual, unsafe time, and if this is what they are asking to keep us safe, get over it."

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What is the point of having a minimum wage if a Government department can simply ignore it?
Apparently, about 60 teachers are being paid below the minimum wage and the union has already referred three cases, relating to overseas teachers recruited to fill the teacher shortage, to the Labour Department’s Migrant Exploitation Inspectorate.
This is astounding. Firstly these are teachers. Secondly, these are teachers who have taken a big personal risk and costs to travel from their home country to help us out.
Apparently, the problem is that the Ministry of Education is still assessing the teacher’s qualifications and experience. Once they get through all that the teachers will be back paid and they hope to get it done by May. May!  The year started in February!
The overseas teachers caught up in this are understandably gobsmacked. A Singaporean teacher, who came here with her lawyer husband, last year did a post-grad teaching diploma at Victoria University but even that’s not enough to convince the bureaucratic teachers. She’s teaching in New Lynn and getting paid $622 a week, or $15.56 an hour. That's $2.14 below the minimum wage. And the whole lot is before tax!
She is quoted as saying, "I never imagined a profession that moulds the future generation of a nation to receive such ill treatment from so many stakeholders here".
An American is on the same deal. She gets under $500 a week after tax and is paying $250 a week in rent. She has used up all her savings and her family is wiring her money from the States.
We put out a worldwide call for teachers to help with our teaching crisis. These teachers took the punt and what happened? We reward them with breadline conditions. Whoever the functionary was who decided this was an appropriate response to the issues that came over their desk is a fool. A rule-based robot with no common sense or humanity at all.
This is the worst advertisement for New Zealand as a place to bring skills as you could hope for.
There is something deeply wrong in the teaching profession. It is hierarchical, bureaucratic, ideological and it’s own worst enemy. For a while, I’ve been of the opinion that the teacher’s staffing woes have been exaggerated as I hear of many teachers who struggle to find jobs despite the dire warnings of crisis. Teachers and their administrators are often their own worst enemy.
But there’s something even deeper than this concern. As I started this story I asked the question, “what is the point of having a minimum wage if a Government department can simply ignore it?”
Surely there should never be a Government employee paid under the minimum wage. Certainly not teachers. Some functionary is muttering about changes to the minimum wage on April 1. This is waffle. The minimum wage hasn’t been as low as $15.56 for at least four years.
If a Government department can choose to pay a skilled worker $15.56 an hour, then why shouldn’t the private sector just do what they please as well?
The whole thing is just not on and something that the Ministry of Education should be ashamed of.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

So no Capital Gains Tax.
An old French philosopher once said: "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose"
It means the more things change the more they stay the same.  We have a Labour led coalition government that came in with a coalition partner saying that capitalism had failed.  They called themselves a transformational government and this year was the year of delivery. The spooked  the busness sector with a minimum wage rise and a halt to future oil and gas exploration and gave beneficiaries a payrise and then……
Nothing.
Labour law reform stymied.  Immigration is back on the rise. Teachers pay dispute deadlocked.  The Zero Carbon Bill marooned in a rising tide of scepticism.  Vulnerable children on the rise.  Mental Health and State Care Abuse reports still eons away. 
Quietly this week Grant Robertson reiterated the Budget Responsibility Rules so there will be no spending greater than revenue.
I am now finding it hard to find any concrete evidence that this government is fundamentally differing from the previous two governments.  Pragmatic, poll driven compromisers.  Ardern and Key are two sides of the same coin and not wildly different in action but only in rhetoric.
And that doesn’t worry me.  I’ll just get on with being the best I can be and so should you.
Meanwhile, Auckland’s underground rail development just blew it’s budget by a billion and could be late in completion.  Gee what a surprise.  Who didn’t see that coming?
We can’t cry over blown budgets because we’re too far gone now and in 20 years’ time we’ll be thankful for the infrastructure and I’ve always said what a pity we didn’t do this in the 50s.
But the Auckland mayor now has to find 500 mill.  He wants to keep his promise not to increase the rates.  So he’s got a plan.
That plan may include selling or leasing the council’s 4500 city carparks.  Now I first greeted this with some despair as those carparks are the last affordable ones in town and then I stopped and wondered why they volunteered this idea so quickly.
Is it part of their plan?  Give the car parks to private industry and watch the prices shoot up into the stratosphere and the result?   Force more people out of their cars.
Depending on which way you stand this is either a genius idea or a new level of social engineering evil.  And it’s even more brilliant when you realise a lot of people who complain that Council’s are in too many businesses that should be in the private sector can’t complain unless they want to be seen as self-serving hypocrites.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It is quite something to walk into a kitchen at 6.30 in the morning to discover your partner in tears. And then, when asked why, for her to gasp out “Notre Dame is burning down”. 
There’s a mute moment after something like that. A flicker of time where you wonder if it’s all a joke and then a sinking feeling. The realisation that something of great beauty, something with 850 years of history, something extremely rare could be gone in an hour.
I often used to wonder if you could take a resident of Athens from 2000 years ago and bring them into the present and showed them the Acropolis today, and see their shock of how that temple broke. The Roman Forum was a centre of all world civilisation and is now a rubble pit with ghosts.
It’s a reminder that nothing lasts forever. There’s a transience to our existence. One we wilfully ignore. It’s human nature.
It’s what the National Party is learning after the Key Years. So enamoured of their popular leader they thought nothing could spoil the party, so the shock at his sudden bailing out after just under a decade was profound and it’s hangover continues.
Last night’s poll shows the National Party is stuck in an unenviable rut. It’s popularity is still high, but not high enough.  It’s leading politicians still register, but not enough.  And there are no friends to make a coalition partner.
Some National Party supporters are saying the left wing celebrations at their dominant position are exaggerated but I don’t think they realise how deep in doo-doo they are.
The Dominion Post’s opinion writer Dave Armstrong tweeted this out this morning “Hey all you celebrating Lefties. Bear in mind a Nats/Green/NZF/Act coalition would beat Labour 51/48”. As if that will ever happen!
Meanwhile, their beleaguered leader on the telly last night cut a forlorn figure as he prayed for a white knight to save him and his party.  It was so desperate I transcribed it.
Simon Bridges said: “There’s ah a new green party being talked of ah there is um ah ah the idea of a Māori party up and running again and there’s a variety of conservative-type parties there in the wings as well.”
If this is the National Party strategy to regain the treasury benches then Grant Robertson is going to have a couple of terms at least to get a Capital Gains Tax over the line.
There’s a quiet desperation in the thought that things might change for the party if they put Judith Collins in charge. She’s too polarising, she’s too abrasive, and there will always be what I call the “Chinese Whispers” about her. She’s no Mother of the Nation, more a grumpy Aunt who will tell you off when Mum wouldn’t.
So not only is the party missing a coalition partner after a decades of condescension to New Zealand First, they are also lacking real leadership. Leadership is not something you turn on and off whenever the nation’s cameras are on you.  It’s not an act.  It’s something you either have or you don’t. I saw no leadership emerge out of the National Party through the terror crisis.
It’s gone from an unbeatable juggernaut to a timid party full of middle managers.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What a fantastic weekend I had. Due to a couple of reasons I went for a big ramble all around the hinterland yesterday. Travelling from one side of the island to the other. I drove 200 kilometres and we visited four different beaches in the day. The dog didn’t know what was happening. Not just one beach walk Dad but four!!!!
But as I drove around the place I noticed some atrocious driving and particularly some aggressive tailgating and then overtaking and the funny thing was that every time it was the same make of car.
A Ford Ranger Double Cab Ute.
That shouldn’t surprise me, after all, they are the biggest selling car in the land and diesel-powered double-cab utes are our car of choice. The statistics are incredible. Double-cab utes make up eight of the top ten new vehicles sold every month. The top five double cab utes are outselling the top five normal cars by a ratio of almost two to one right now. Our next favourites are SUVs and vans then way back in the field passenger cars.
When it comes to electric vehicles the figures are even more overwhelming.  or every electric car we bought last year we bought 64 mostly-diesel double-cab utes! One electric car, 64 double-cab utes!
This is all bad news for our carbon emissions from transport because we love our caravan towing, bike carrying weekend adventure machine with the 3.2-litre motor.
There are 4.2 million vehicles in the fleet today, if you want to replace all those with electric vehicles you’d be doing so at a rate of 131,250 a year for the next 32 years! Every year you don’t replace them at that rate you have to add that to the following years. Last year we bought about 3,000 electric vehicles. So, only 128,250 short. We’re toast. No wonder the carbon emissions are going up over 2 per cent every year.
Now I don’t know what the matter is with the drivers of the Ford Rangers on the open road, but something’s up. They may be driving what is essentially a small truck but their mindset is that they’re racing a Ford Escort rally car.
Not content with demolishing the air quality they are also very keen on driving a foot behind you with their front bumper bars looming in your back window. Lights flashing because of course, they need to get ahead of you for some vitally important reason. I wouldn’t mind if I was poodling along at 7ok in an old Ford Anglia but when you’re in a Ford SUV yourself with cruise control set at 100k you have to wonder what they’re up to. 
You know I’m trying to figure out if buying a Ford Ranger turns you into a dick or whether it’s dicks who prefer Ford Rangers.
But whatever it’s holiday time and I’d urge everyone just to chill out and enjoy the journey.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When we come to the end of the week, I often look back on all the events and developments that we’ve talked about on air and in society, and sometimes I wonder what really happened, if anything, at all?
So we now have gun laws to get the really bad guns off our streets – though the funny thing is that the really bad guns have never been on the streets.  The illegal guns in the illegal hands have always been hidden and somehow I can’t see how a few new laws is going to stop what happened on the 15th of March happening again.
This will be a cull of guns from those people who already wanted to cull their guns, and it’s going to cost an awful lot of money.  But it sends a good signal and the number of bad guns won’t increase but they’re not going to disappear either. 
By the way – the police would like you to know that if you're a bad  guy with a bad gun could you tai ho a while before you hand yourself in because they're not ready to deal with you.  Awesome.
It’s like climate change measures.  Greenpeace released the latest New Zealand emission figures this week which showed that despite all our good intentions and conversations and debates the emissions still go up – in the last measured year over two per cent.  
Since 1990 they’re up 23 per cent.  You could say things like the Emission Tradings Scheme and education programmes and incentive schemes for solar power and EVs have failed.  All that money, all that effort.  But then again, maybe without them things could be worse.
And then there’s Brexit. The horror this week extended to Halloween.  On the 23rd of June 2016, 51.9 per cent of Britons voted to leave the EU.  Nearly three years later after billions of pounds, trillions of words, debates and articles, and zillions of hours of negotiation, absolutely nothing at all has changed.  Other than the reputation of the Brits which is shattered and nobody is buying the shares in their companies even though they’re at rock bottom prices.
So much fire and brimstone and shock and awe in the world and yet no progress.  I think it could be sheeted home to the internet which has enabled so much information and misinformation to be spread to so many.  That has enabled all the sides a chance to put their case.  
It’s harder than ever to pull the wool over our eyes and we have become paralysed.  Thankfully in a relatively stable and safe place.
So it was great last night to go to the opening of the Mandela exhibition at Eden Park.  Mandela made something happen and Mandela made something change. 
For me the highlight was seeing Bob Burgess speak. In the early 70s Bob was a hairy hippy All Black First 5 who played 30 games for the Abs and 7 tests.  My Dad and I loved him.  He loved his work and Dad, who worked at IBM, said Bob reminded him of all the new-fangled guys called computer programmers he was working with. When he started flying down the field with his hair trailing behind him he looked great
And Bob Burgess was a man of values.  In 1970 Bob refused nomination for the All Black trials for the tour of South Africa as a protest against that country's apartheid regime, and in 1981 he actively campaigned against the 1981 South African tour of New Zealand.
Bob took a personal hit for something he believed in.  Now aged 70, he looks as fit as a buckrat.  The hair is silver and now it’s short.  He’s still sporting facial hair.  And when he spoke you heard the determination and belief.  He blew the room away. It was refreshing to hear in these wishy washy days.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.