The revelation that the Deputy Commissioner of Police Jevon McSkimming was a predatory pervert was one thing. To find out that our most senior police officers were complicit in not only covering up his inappropriate behaviour, but then prosecuting, persecuting his victim is quite frankly horrifying.  

I knew, many of you knew, Andrew Coster was an ineffectual toadying eunuch. Does anyone remember his one and only hour in the studio when he spoke in slogans and was completely incomprehensible? I couldn't have been more delighted when Police Minister Mark Mitchell moved him on and replaced him with a proper cop, Richard Chambers.  

The fact that Jevon McSkimming came so close to the top job defies belief, given the accusations swirling around him. And he only came so close to the top job because Coster, Kura, de Wattignar, and Basham needed him to be in the top job to hide their moral and professional failures.  

This is absolutely appalling. McSkimming is a sick pervert. He needs help, professional help. The rest of them were just motivated by saving their sorry skins and were willing to throw a vulnerable young woman to the wolves to allow her to be prosecuted to save themselves. The young woman in question sent multiple emails to ministers, MPs, the media, she wrote on LinkedIn, she phoned the police complaints line. She might have appeared to be obsessive, but nothing makes a woman more unhinged than being gaslit, than being ganged up on, than being not believed.  

You can imagine McSkimming – ‘mate, she's a bunny boiler. Yeah, crazy’. If they were any sort of cops, any sort of people, they would know that is manipulation 101. Dismiss her as a lunatic. You know, confess, yes, what was I thinking? I was 40, she was 21. I shouldn't have had the affair, but, you know, I ended it and saw the error of my ways. And now she's trying to ruin my career. You've got to save me. You've got to help me. And they did. 

Not one of those former top cops, the very top cops in the country, ever thought to have a chat to her, or to get one of their staff to have a chat to her, to hear her side of the story. Did they not find it odd that McSkimming didn't say, look, talk to her, you'll see for yourself? No. Not only did they not do anything, they prosecuted her. They put her through hell.  

It's appalling, it's horrifying, it adds grist to Tamatha Paul’s anti-police mill. Richard Chambers has a hell of a job ahead of him in rebuilding faith in the Police, and he knows that.  

“My job right now is to ensure that I take on board all the recommendations and work swiftly to put everything in place to ensure that this never happens again.  

“And, you know, in terms of other stuff out there, well, I only know what I know. I'm not aware of anything else, and God, I hope that's not the case because, you know, the people of New Zealand, when they reach out to New Zealand Police, deserve the best possible service they can get, and they need to be taken seriously.  

“And I've been very clear about that since I took over as the Commissioner. Our priority is supporting the frontline staff of my organisation who do this work day and night. And, and I'm really proud of that. And, you know, my focus now will be putting a new leadership team in place, and they will be working with me to help steer New Zealand Police, in the right direction and ensure that these appalling situations never happen again.” 

Oh, hello 2007. Police Commissioner Howard Broad, after the Royal Commission of Inquiry, after the ghastly Scholllum Shipton cover-up there.  

“I will now ask all serving members to join with me to make the changes necessary to prevent this sort of behaviour ever happening again. The work's already started. We're moving quickly on this. A draft code's been fully consulted. There'll be a reform of the 1958 Police Act”.  At the heart of the issues looked at by the Commission of Inquiry has been abuses of power. Yes, policies, processes, and sanctions can only go so far. That's quite right. There were processes in place that were circumvented by these abusers. Abusers of the woman and abusers of power. What happens to people that they become like this? Coster's on the record as saying he entered the police because of his Christian faith, his Christian duty to serve.  

I feel for the good, honest men and women wearing the blue uniform who turn up to work every day trying to make New Zealand a better, safer community. They have been so badly let down by their bosses. But a number of them knew how hopeless Coster was. The number of texts and emails I received over the years that he was Commissioner were extraordinary. I'm not sure if they knew the depths to which he would go to save his skin and his salary, but they knew he was a wrong'un. They had a copper's nose to sniff out when something was wrong.  

I would love to hear from you on this one. I still trust the Police. I still back the Police. My faith in the Police hierarchy was shaken with Coster in the top role, and it's been absolutely rocked with the revelations of yesterday. With Richard Chambers as Commissioner, the ship has been righted. The oversight being introduced will help ensure corrupt officials won't be able to circumvent the processes designed to prevent and detect wrongdoing. But by bloody crikey, the Police will not be able to endure another scandal like this one, that's for sure. 

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At what point, when you're a business owner, do you decide that you've had enough? There was Covid, then there were the boom times, then there was the recession that seems to have gone on and on, there's a crisis in consumer confidence, there's global uncertainty that too has gone on and on. There are problems finding staff, there are problems keeping staff, there are problems finding work, problems with cash flow. At what point, which 3 in the morning wake up do you think, "I can't do this anymore?" Do you look at your life and realise that for the past five years you haven't had a life, and you call it quits or do you look at your books, and find yourself hoping for a good summer, then realise that hope is not a strategy, and decide to pull the pin?  

Business liquidations hit a 10-year high last year, with 2,500 companies folding, and that's the highest annual figure since 2014. Retail and construction suffered the most. But this year it's even worse. The number of companies put into liquidation so far in 2025 has surpassed last year's total for the same period, as economic pressures and low consumer confidence impact business viability.   

Dry words to describe heart palpitations, terror, dry mouth, sleeplessness, fractiousness. Very dry words to describe a terrible time in your life. Analysts say the recent rise in liquidations can be attributed to an increased focus on enforcement by Inland Revenue, as well as a lag of companies that were in distress during Covid but were propped up with government money, so it gave them a false second life.  

There's a long-held belief that recessions and shocks like Covid clear the dead wood, that there are many companies that shouldn't be in business, that fall by the wayside. But behind that, every business that closes its doors are people who put their hopes and their dreams and their labour and their hard work and their life savings into it.   

But does deciding to call it quits bring its own freedom? If you have been in a lather, desperately hoping that you're going to turn the corner for years now, not months, but for years, can deciding to call it quits be liberating? If you've had to make the tough decision to call it, it's done, can it be a relief?  

There are many people who, you know, through the GFC, it was similar. There were businesses that went by the wayside as people suddenly found they had no spare cash in their pockets. The stock market crash in New Zealand. Now that saw people with astronomically high interest rates, mortgage interest and business interest rates.  

Again, people with no disposable, lack of consumer confidence, a time of austerity. There were plenty of businesses that went under in the 80s as well. '87 was the stock market crash, and then from, I think it was really about 1990 that I remember that it was just a very, very grim, grim, austere, brutal time.  

So people have been through it before, and if you have, is there life after insolvency, after a liquidation, after closing your doors and saying, "I cannot do this anymore. I just can't?” There are more important things. My health is more important, my family is more important.  

Is there, and this is where I'm going to need you to tell me because I've never owned my own business, but I've certainly heard from a number of you over the years who love being your own boss. You can't imagine working for anybody else, but by God, that comes at a price, especially in times like these. So, if you've made the decision to call it, does insolvency mean the end and a new beginning? 

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The BBC is facing accusations of bias, as well as a lawsuit, after a leaked memo suggests the Panorama programme edited one of Donald Trump’s speeches to imply he encouraged the Capitol Hill riots of January 2021. 

The US President is demanding a full retraction and is threatening to sue for nearly 1.8 billion New Zealand dollars in damages. 

The incident is doing nothing to raise trust in the media, or dispel concerns of media bias. 

NZME Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie told Kerre Woodham that a reporter’s job when covering the news is to report the facts accurately, fairly, and in a balanced view, and some of the criticism that’s been directed towards the media is that a lot of reporters have been allowed to inject their own opinion or analysis into those news reports.  

“I think we’re getting to a point now where you’ll see much more clearly differentiated, this is news, this is opinion, this is analysis.” 

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Many businesses that limped through the pandemic are now going under. 

Insolvency practitioners have been reporting a sharp rise in the number of insolvencies since mid-2022. 

Smaller retail, hospitality, construction, transport and manufacturing operators are failing far more now than they were before the pandemic. 

Waterstone Insolvency Principal Damien Grant told Kerre Woodham a lot of businesses are subject to economic winds, which are outside of their control.  

He says we as a country are getting poorer, which means disposable income and things like hospitality are dropping, which is why you see a lot of pain in the hospitality sector in particular.  

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So the government's Sunday sessions this year have involved announcements of all sorts of policies, ranging from ho-hum to meaningful.The announcement yesterday of the action plan against organised crime comes under the meaningful. Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith released what he called a bold and comprehensive action plan that aimed to disrupt supply, go after those who profit from the drug trade and rebuild communities afflicted by meth, as he outlined to Mike Hosking on the Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning.

This is a scourge on society that we need to keep on battling against every day, finding new ways to combat the organised criminals who are doing this, but also dealing with the you know, better rehabilitation and actually for the first time sending a clear message through a hard-hitting media campaign, this is not a good idea to get involved with in any way, shape or form.

Paul, in all honesty, is a hard-hitting media campaign to your average, you know, dare I suggest unemployed, go nowhere meth addict. Is that going to make one jot of difference?

No, but it may stop some people taking the risk. And no single thing on its own is going to solve the problem. Of course, a campaign's not going to deal with a hardened sort of meth addict, but there may be a young person who's thinking about it, who if they get a clear message, this is not something you could use moderately, it's not something just to have a bit of a dabble with, it's something to avoid at all costs because some people, just one shot's enough to lead to a decade-long spiral of chaos and destruction, and that's what we want to send a clear message about.

I don't know how you can not know that there's a very high chance that dabbling in meth can bring about ruin. Of course, not everybody who tries meth will see their life fall apart, but the odds are not great. Any drug, any misuse of a drug can bring about ruin. But meth seems to be particularly high in terms of getting its claws into people and consuming them, taking them over completely. You're not consuming the drug, it's consuming you.

And it's not, your no-hopers that Mike Hosking referred to that end up destroyed by meth. It's all strata of society. You might end up a no-hoper, but you started off with jobs and businesses and companies and families and friends and a great lifestyle, gone.

How can you not know that? I mean, in the early, early, early days, maybe what, 20 odd years ago, you might have thought, oh, okay, it's a new drug, I'll give it a try. I've tried other drugs and I'm on top of that and, you know, all the go-ask-gala scare campaigns that people try to use - I'm sophisticated, I know what I'm doing, you know, and then people come a cropper because they didn't know what they were dealing with. Now you do. You know exactly what harm it can cause and you're still going to give it a try? Really? The media campaign, while it will probably bolster our coffers, seems a waste of time.  

The rest of it, well, it makes sense. Policing, border security and addiction services will join forces to combat importation, distribution and demand. Customs, Defence and the GCSB will run a series of maritime operations across the Pacific, partnering to collect intelligence and identify drug smugglers on the water.They'll try to find, deter and disrupt shipments before they reach New Zealand. Well, good luck with that, because the drugs come in from Central and South America in a corridor down through the South Pacific where traffickers will use tiny atolls and islands that are part of the Cooks or Tonga or Samoa as refuelling and staging points.

Back in 2019, I talked about this with Jose Suza Santos and he talked about the corridor that was well established in 2019 and about the damage being done to Pacific nations with this drugs corridor because of course they'll try it too. They will take the drugs, they'll take their cut, everybody takes a cut along the way, and drugs are apparently a huge problem in Fiji, taking a hold in Samoa, Tonga and the like.

So six years later, this government is finally doing something in an attempt to disrupt the drug smugglers.The more aggressive stance will be supported by plans to strengthen search and surveillance powers. There'll be the expansion of electronic interception (hello GCSB), and speed up asset seizures under the Criminal Proceeds Recovery Act.

There'll be a new police money laundering team to chase the cash behind organized crime and offshore police liaison officers looking at the syndicates logistics and banking networks.

The plan puts $30 million out of the mental health and addiction budget over four years into treatment and early intervention services in communities that are hit hardest by meth, and there'll be a nearly $6 million national prevention campaign paid for with the seized proceeds of crime.

We've seen a sharp rise in drug harm. Wastewater testing showing meth use roughly doubled between 23 and 24. And officials estimate the social harm from meth and other illicit drugs at $1.5 billion in 2024.

We know this. We know the harm it causes. We know that meth is a really, really dangerous drug to dabble in. Why are people still running that risk? What is what do you need to block out, numb, void from your life with meth? Is it worry over your business, worry over your job, worry over a relationship? Just opting out of being a parent, opting out of life?

It's miserable, it's hard. You can have a couple of hours of oblivion and you'll do whatever it takes to get outside of your own head. I don't know, I just cannot understand why you would do it. And why would you would put money in the pockets of these people?

So the recommendations come from advice received from an expert ministerial advisory group that was tasked with advising on how New Zealand security agencies could better respond to organised crime and work together to do so.

So the recommendations such as the maritime patrols, the greater powers to go after the proceeds of crime, the electronic surveillance, come from the Ministerial Advisory Group's report.

Other suggestions weren't picked up on. A Minister of Organised Crime, for example, was recommended to coordinate the 13 agencies that will be charged with battling the cartels. It's a start. It's I mean, I would almost say that the horse has bolted. That corridor is well established. I don't know how you would go about patrolling the many, many islands and atolls of the South Pacific.

But why? why? why? why? when you know what's happened to the to people who thought they could try it and control it and just use it as a bit of harmless fun, why would you put money into the pockets of these people?W hat is so awful about your life that you're willing to dance with the devil? 

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The Government's announced its methamphetamine action plan, calling the drug a 'scourge on our society'.

Methamphetamine consumption doubled from 732kg in 2023 to almost 1,500 kilos in 2024, according to police wastewater testing.

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith says the prevention campaign will address importation, distribution and most importantly demand.

NZ Police Acting Assistant Commissioner: Investigations, Serious and Organised Crime, Corrie Parnell told Kerre Woodham that 'we've got to tackle it and tackle it hard and front on.'

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New Zealand has the third highest adult obesity rate in the OECD, and the rates are going up. One in three adult New Zealanders is classified as obese, and one in 10 children. Even if you take into account, yes, yes, yes, a lot of the All Blacks front row are considered obese if you use the BMI. And yes, you might have a slow metabolism or it's your hormones and there's nothing you can do about it, that's still a lot of fat people and a lot of associated health issues. 

The cost of obesity in this country is estimated as being between four and nine billion dollars per year. It's a huge range, four to nine billion, but it's where you classify the different illnesses, and it depends on which survey you look at. Even if you go at the lower limit, $4 billion is a hell of a lot of money to spend on something that doesn't need to happen. Cardiovascular disease alone costs more than three billion. The human misery too that comes with being obese for many kids and adults is another intangible cost.  

But now we have a drug for that. GLP-1 is the magic ingredient. It regulates blood sugar levels and slows down the rate at which food leaves the stomach, thus making people fuller for longer. And apparently, according to those who've used it, it turns off the chatter in your head, the constant thinking about food. Well, if I have this and then I walk for an hour and then I'll be able to have something else. Ooh. Ooh, I'm not hungry now, but ooh, imagine what I could have for dinner. Planning the next meal before you've actually finished the one in front of you. It's that constant food chatter. I think Oprah was the first one to talk about it, how she never realised until she took the magic drug, that you didn't have to listen to that noise in your head, that other people didn't have it. 

So the GLP-1-mimicking drugs seem to be a powerful tool. They're actually effective.  And after decades of research and money being poured into weight loss drugs, this one seems to work. More importantly, this one doesn't have the side effects of the speed drugs that were given out in the 70s as diet pills. It was basically methamphetamine. Some people are losing around 15% of their body weight or more after just over a year on the semaglutide. 

Wegovy became available to New Zealanders in July. It's not publicly funded. It's a weekly drug and comes at an ongoing cost of about $500 a month. Should it be funded? 

David Seymour, the Associate Minister for Health, seems to think so. In the past he said, well, if you spend a buck to save five, why wouldn't you?  Although as he points out, Pharmac's decisions are independent of any ministers. The NHS in Britain has done the sums. If the weight loss drugs were prescribed to everyone who needed them according to the stringent criteria, the prohibitively expensive cost would bankrupt the NHS even after taking into account the cost of the health problems that they would inevitably solve. So you would have to do the sums for this country to work out whether it would pay off in the long run. If that's what it does, if, you know, one buck is going to save us five long term. If a huge cohort, in every sense of the word, of New Zealanders is going to live a better life, a healthier life as a result of the investment, surely it's worth it? 

But to get buy-in, you would have to get the support of the majority of New Zealanders. One in three adult New Zealanders is classified as obese, two in three aren't. And they might say, well, I'm doing everything right for my body. I'm doing the exercise and I'm not greedy. Some might well see obesity as a moral failing. Throughout history, it's been seen as a moral failing. 

One of the seven deadly sins is gluttony. In Dante's Inferno, the gluttons are consigned to the third circle of hell. Gluttons are people with uncontrolled appetites who worship food as a kind of God, according to Dante. Therefore, the gluttons' punishment in the third circle of hell, instead of eating fine delicate foods and wines, they're forced to eat filth and mud and be rained upon by foul smelling rain. Cerberus, the dog, ravages them and mauls them. It's a miserable punishment.  

Gluttons have always been seen as moral failures. Which may, I think, have been fair at a time where resources were scarce, and if you were wealthy, you got other people to get food for you and you ate it at the expense of the poor. But these days, when the food industry is making money out of processed food designed to hook you in and give you an insatiable appetite for more, I think we can take the moral failing out, can't we? 

Most people know what to do. There's far more to it than just calories in, calories out and more exercise, and even the makers of Wegovy and Ozempic and the like understand that too. They say it's not going to work on its own. It's the same with bariatric surgery, you have to do so much more than just stop the food going in. There is much, much more to it than that. 

If we do the sums, the NHS says they've done them and the cost is too high. But if we do the sums for this country, and ultimately, we spend a dollar to save five, why wouldn't we? Why wouldn't we put everybody who wants the Wegovy onto it? 

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The Prime Minister says he's confident a free trade agreement with India will get across the line soon. 

Christopher Luxon denied negotiations had hit a rough patch after skipping Parliament last minute this week to meet with India’s Trade Minister.  

He told Kerre Woodham India has very strong positions on certain aspects of trade. 

Luxon says they’re really hard negotiators, but equally they want the best possible deal they can secure for New Zealand.  

The Government's aiming to finalise the FTA this year and the Prime Minister's confirmed Trade Minister Todd McClay will head there next week. 

Luxon's popularity has lagged in polls this year and there’s a growing sentiment that National should consider a leadership change for the next election.  

However, the Prime Minister told Woodham a potential successor hasn't crossed his mind.   

When told people aren’t buying the product he and his government are selling, he told Woodham to wait and find out what happens next year. 

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Publicly funding weightloss drugs may not be the answer to the country’s obesity problem.  

New Zealand has the third highest adult obesity rate in the OECD, with one in three adults classified as obese, and one in ten children.  

Associate Minister of Health David Seymour believes publicly funding things like Wegovy would help save money in the long run. 

But community leader and Founder of Butterbean Motivation, Dave Letele told Kerre Woodham that we can’t prescribe our way out of this issue. 

While he's not against weightloss drugs, he says they don’t change habits, mindsets, and they don’t break cycles for children.  

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What do you do, when you have invested all your money into an idea you thought was going off, and then the whole world shuts down?  

Do you try to fight on? Or do you completely change your business to survive? 

That’s the decision Aidan Bartlett faced.  

He’s the co-founder and chief Executive of online marketplace Designer Wardrobe. It was, once upon a time, a designer rental shop.  

Covid-19 wrecked the business but also gave it a new life.  

Aidan Bartlett joined Kerre Woodham in studio in the latest episode of Bosses Unfiltered. 

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