Hints from the Prime Minister around upcoming changes to charities and taxes. 

Christopher Luxon told Kerre Woodham the Goverment's speaking about whether people are "rorting the system" and taking advantage of charities registration. 

He says he spoke with Finance and Economic Growth Minister, Nicola Willis, about the matter just yesterday. 

Luxon told Woodham some organisations present as a charity but maybe aren't doing charitable work. 

He's telling people to keep their eyes on the Budget - around taxation and charity status. 

The Prime Minister's also calling for some nurses to take on roles outside hospitals to ease burden on the system. 

Christopher Luxon admitted we've got a lot of nurses coming through the system, but don't always have places for them in hospitals. 

Luxon told Kerre Woodham we desperately need them in primary and aged care, and in some cases, it takes weeks to get a GP appointment. 

He says there's an opportunity to think about how we use our nurses - like nurse practitioners who can increasingly do the work a GP does. 

The Prime Minister's also keen to reach across the political aisle in a bid to secure a bipartisan approach to infrastructure.  

Luxon revealed he's been in conversation with Labour's finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds, who's supportive of elements of the Government's infrastructure pipeline plan.  

Luxon told Woodham that for the Government to actually get things done when it comes to the country's infrastructure problems, a bipartisan solution must be found. 

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Before I came upstairs to work, I called into the coffee shop downstairs, as is my want. Coffee Theory is run by a husband and wife family team and is a small business.  We were talking about the fact that Christopher Luxon will be in tomorrow, and I said “have you got a question?” And Penny said “When will things get better? I know they're supposed to be, but when will things get better? I just wish they'd get better faster”. And that's kind of what we were talking about in the wake of the polls showing the Coalition party support slipping. People do believe things are getting a bit better, but they want it to happen faster. 

Perhaps with the OCR falling by 50 points, as was widely expected by economists, things will start to look up. The floating rates dropped, some banks have dropped their loan term interest rates. And although the floating rate is more directly affected by the OCR, the long-term loan interest rates that are set by the banks are affected by other things like term deposits, and world events, and the like. Banks have been put on notice by Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr to sharpen their pencils, and they've been told in no uncertain terms to come up with better rates for their customers. 

“The banks need to do better. They need to look at their own margins and chase and compete for customers much more vigorously. Their funding costs are being challenged because, you know the official cash rate is only one of the variables that go into what they have to pay when they're borrowing money to on-lend, but the margin is also sitting there at a very healthy level, so one would hope that when the competition, when people come back to the market, which they're doing in dribs and drabs now, competition is alive.” 

That was Adrian Orr on the Mike Hosking Breakfast. And it is true. Once mortgage rates have been set, or loans have been set, and the interest rate for borrowing that money is a little bit lower, then there isn't as much that you have to pay, so there's a little bit leftover in your back pocket once the bills have been paid. And thus, the noose around the necks of so many homeowners and business owners will start to loosen.  

Already, some sectors have recovered, come back from the very brink. Federated Farmers says farmer confidence has risen to its highest level in more than a decade, rebounding from record lows. It couldn't have got much worse for our farming communities. Remember that lovely man that rang in? I can't even remember how long ago... he was the first caller, and he spoke with such passion and with such heartfelt pain about the despair so many farmers felt as the result of being vilified for what they did. For being on the receiving end of legislation that made it nigh impossible to do their job, and yet without them, we would be completely and utterly and royally stuffed. But he was too fearful of saying what he did. Rather than saying proudly, I’m a farmer, he just didn't feel he could say that. He didn't have any confidence at all that he would get a fair or civil reception. And that prompted an avalanche of calls from those in the farming community, young and old, who felt very much the same.  

So when they say it was at record lows, I heard it. Now, they say farmer confidence has risen to its highest level in more than a decade. The latest Farm Confidence survey shows that falling interest rates, rising incomes, and more favourable farming rules have played a major role in the improvement. And they say that's a significant shift in the mood of rural New Zealand. Thank heavens for that and not before time. Hopefully farmers can take a big deep breath, you might actually be getting some sleep at night and you can look forward to the future with a little bit of confidence.  

What other sectors are seeing that – it just farming? Is tourism feeling the same kind of confidence, the same optimism? I imagine for retailers you might need to wait for the flow and effect of lower mortgage interest rates. But I'd be really interested to see where you are in terms of your confidence, in terms of your belief, that things are getting better and that things will be better in the short term, within the next 6 months, that things will be looking up. The farmers are feeling it, they're feeling confident. They’ve seen what lower interest rates and reasonable fair legislation can do. What about you? 

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I don't think this counts as breaking news, does it?  

An inquiry ordered by the Prime Minister has identified significant failures with public agencies’ protection of New Zealanders’ personal information and management of conflict of interests. The investigation, which focused on public agencies actions, was sparked by allegations last year that data provided to health and social services providers at Manurewa Marae for the census and for Covid-19 vaccinations was misused. Those murmurings were rumbling for some time before the investigation was sparked.  

It was claimed personal information was improperly used to favour Te Pati Māori and the Māori electorate of Tamaki Makaurau. The allegations have been denied, but the Government wanted assurances that Kiwis’ data had been properly safeguarded.  

Spoiler alert, it wasn't. Among the findings of the report is that the Ministry of Health and Health New Zealand did not have control over data once it was downloaded by providers, had no means for ensuring providers were meeting contractual expectations, and had no safeguards for managing potential conflicts of interest. This really doesn't come as any surprise to me at all. Stats New Zealand was found to have insufficient arrangements to protect the shared data. The findings are so serious for Stats NZ that chief executive Mark Sowden has fallen on his sword and will leave at the end of his current term, something public services Commissioner Sir Brian Roche says is the right thing to do.  

Waipareira Trust chief executive and president of Te Pati Māori John Tamihere on the other hand, is defending the use of data at Manurewa Marae, saying there's no evidence of any wrongdoing. He says they're being targeted for being Māori, a Māori organisation attracting extra scrutiny over suspicions that Māori were somehow crooked. He said whistle blowers had not been able to provide evidence that data was actually misused. He said every political party used data and Waipareira Trust, which had existed for 40 years, had built up huge data sets. He denied that the census data from government agencies that had been shared with the Manurewa Marae was then handed over to Te Pati Māori.  

Labour leader Chris Hipkins on Three News last night seemed to suggest that he himself had raised eyebrows but would wait the findings of the police investigation.  

“I've certainly felt that the election in that seat was unfair and the result in that seat was unfair. I think the fact that our polling booth was held at the Manurewa Marae with very active Māori party presence really did draw into question the result there. It was such a close result.” 

Just to remind you of the result in the electorate of Tamaki Makaurau, Maurewa Marae CEO and Te Pāti Māori's representative Takutai Tarsh Kemp took the seat from Labour's Peeni Henare by four votes, just four. On recount, that went to 42 votes, because naturally, Peeni Henare said “I’ve held that seat since 2014. I find it very hard to believe I could have lost it. Oh, hang on a minute, no I don't.”  

Should there be a by-election? If Te Pati Māori believes they won the seat fair and square, that Labour was being rolled in plenty of other long held seats, would their member be willing to put it to the test in a by-election? Where there’s absolutely no hint of wrongdoing on behalf of her party, that here we are fair and square, let's go mano o mano, go head-to-head and let's see who wins at this time. I mean, I suppose the horses bolted.  

If the data has been misused, and at the moment there are no individuals you can point the didgeridoo at and say they misused that information, but there is a police investigation ongoing. There is no clear evidence that could go before a court, that the data was misused. But if it looks like a rat, smells like a rat, and it's got a long tail like a rat, it does make you raise your eyebrows. You need a definitive answer: was the data misused or not? At the moment we have suspicions, we have rumblings. And while those rumblings continue, then it puts the whole judicial process and the whole electoral process in doubt. 

I mean, you look at the CEO of Manurewa Marae winning the seat and you think really, did she? Was it fair and square? I don't know. Labour was being rolled left, right and centre. She might just have got lucky. I smell rats.   

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Remember late last year we were talking about the proposal to move Westport. The West Coast town has been repeatedly inundated by flooding since European settlement, but that's escalated in recent years. The Buller River flooded the town regularly - July 2021's Flood was particularly devastating.  

A draft master plan proposed relocating the town to farmland southwest of its current location, and we talked to one of the locals involved in planning the move, which isn't happening today, and it's not happening tomorrow but as part of a long-term relocation. We knew houses or commercial buildings need to be built. They won't be built on existing sites in the Township, but on the new land. So build it and they will come.  

Now another Township is bowing to the inevitable. The report has found that there is no viable long-term solution to prevent the frequent flooding of Kumeu, which is a gorgeous semi-rural township in northwest Auckland. As Rodney Local Board member Guy Wishart put it, there is no cavalry coming to save the town. He lost his Kumeu home in the 2023 floods and has moved to Helensville.  

The report outlined a history of flooding in Kumeu-Huapai stretching back to 1926. Since then, there have been five notable floods and more recently, floods in August 2021 and two floods in 2023. The report looked at possible solutions other than relocation. One of them was a $163 million dam upstream from the township, which, if it failed, “would have catastrophic impacts”, causing significant damage and risks to life.  

Well yes, if it failed, but you don't build dams expecting them to do so. And I think if you're saying it's $163 million, you can probably add another half of that on top. But according to local body councillors, there's no real alternative but to look at a managed retreat, relocate the town centre to an appropriate location, and for the council not to consent buildings and flood zones – which sounds like a no brainer, but it's happening everywhere.

Why would you be building on a flood zone where it's flooded and flooded and flooded again? The floods are nothing new, according to those who've lived in the area their whole lives. There was a great story in the Kumeu Courier where they spoke to a local and looked at the history of the floods. After the large floods in 1924 and 1926, the almost annual floods in Kumeu Township compelled the then Ministry of Works to use depression labour to build a stock bank on farmland South of the Kumeu River Bridge, which is still needed and still clearly visible today according to the Courier.

A local, who was a boy in the floods, said in 2021, the rainfall was 190 millimetres in 14 hours, but back in 1954 in the big flood he remembered, the rainfall was 150 millimetres in 5 1/2 hours. It was like a wall of water. And after the March 1954 floods, locals said, oh well, we're not going to see the like of that again. Six months later it rained for three days and three nights and created a second large flood in the same year.  

So things are not going to suddenly get better. If anything, it will only get worse. But what do you do when you've bought a house there, you're raising your family there, you've been through a couple of floods already, and you’re being told that the only possible solution is eventual relocation? How do you manage to spend your days there, knowing that every time it rains, you're going to be feeling sick? Knowing that long term you're going to have to leave your land, your home, your business behind?  

Is relocation the only possible solution as far as you can see, especially if you have lived there for some time? I'd really like to get your thoughts on this and for all of those towns, because this is not the only town, this is not the only settlement that is facing the issue of dealing with weather events that have always happened, there's a history of them happening, and they're only going to get more frequent overtime. Yes, the Council shouldn't have consented back in the day - they did. And we are where we are now. People who have homes, who have businesses who have livelihoods on land that ultimately is going to be covered in water.  

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Kumeū wants to move. 

Auckland Council's laid out its plan for Kumeū to try to mitigate the impacts of flooding.  

Although they had three ideas for mitigation, the council's found no viable solution to the town's history of floods, as none of the options would drop the flood levels by 1 meter as needed. 

About 200 people attended a public meeting in Auckland's northwest last night to discuss the issue. 

Rodney Councillor Greg Sayers says those attending want a plan to move the town's centre. 

He says they also committed to creating stronger rules to prevent people building houses in flood zones. 

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Well after a wonderful weekend, a fabulous weekend, the incidents on Saturday afternoon and Saturday night were really disappointing. 

Increasingly, New Zealand is starting to feel like 1970’s New Zealand, but without the good bits. We've got the racism, we've got the homophobia, but we don't have the housing affordability and the excellent education system. It's the 70s gone wrong.

What is it with some people? Do we have to fight the good fight every single generation?

A group of smug, righteous, deluded members of Destiny Church, led by that oleaginous, self-aggrandising, self appointed bishop Tamaki, pushed, shoved, and punched their way inside the Te Atatu Community Centre where a drag artist was hosting a child's science show. Nobody had been forced to take their children to the drag queen’s science show. Classrooms weren't herded up and put on buses and made to go. This was a free choice made by parents who knew their children would enjoy seeing a Unicorn on two feet. Which is what drag artists look like.

The children were not frightened by sequins and rainbows and colour, but they would have been terrified by thugs and yelling, shoving and crashing their way into the building. About 30 toddlers, young children and their parents sought refuge within the community centre by barricading themselves inside. Hours later, the same group broke through police barricades at the Auckland Rainbow Parade. There they made a complete nuisance of themselves and held up the parade with a haka.

Destiny Church are perfectly free to protest. If they want to ignore the teachings of the New Testament, as I understand them - we all have our different readings of the Bible – but as I understand it, if Tamaki wants to instruct his followers to follow some interpretive dance version of the fire and brimstone Old Testament according to Tamaki, they want to hold up their signs and chant their slogans, fill your jackboots, do what you will.

Everyone has the right to protest peacefully but storming into a community library, imposing their own version of how to live on others. No. Tamaki said there may have been some pushing and shoving, but that he would smack anyone who was trying to pervert his child in a room.

Oh really? I wasn't going to go there, but seeing as Tamaki has, you'll have probably seen the posting that's been doing the rounds for some time now, the post that shows a chart: Two different groups have been convicted of sexually abusing children in New Zealand between 1990 and 2022. Drag Queens on one side, church leaders and members on the other. Number of drag Queens have been convicted of the sexual abuse of children over 32 years. None. Not one. Number of church members have been convicted of the sexual abuse of children over 32 years. 22.

That is the tip of the iceberg. So yeah, when it comes to perversion, Tamaki might want to have a long look at the history of church groups over the past few years. 

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The Prime Minister says anti-LGBTQ protestors linked to Destiny Church, went too far in disruptions yesterday.

Members of the church's Man Up and Legacy groups, stormed a children's drag event at a west Auckland library - where about 30 people had to be barricaded inside.

Later, police intervened, when the the same group also disrupted Pride Parade festivities, on Ponsonby Road, with a haka.

The Topp Twins also made a statement on their social media saying “We will not be intimidated. We will not stand for violence. We are vibrant, strong, beautiful and loving. We will not go away." 

Dame Jools Topp joins the show.

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Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown says he's aware there's strong interest in the outcomes of his China visit, and will share details in the coming days.  

Foreign Minister Winston Peters has expressed concern the Cook Islands didn't properly consult New Zealand on its proposed agreements with China.   

Brown says he's engaged in critical discussions over the past days, opening the door to such collaboration as expanding marine research, and improving climate resilience.   

He says every conversation is guided by what's best for the Cook Islands. 

Dr Lachlan McNamee, Lecturer of Politics at Monash University, told Kerre Woodham that since the agreement is likely be focusing on things like fishing and deep sea mining, you can see why Brown may not have thought it was necessary to consult New Zealand. 

However, he says, it’s still a bit impolite, and is probably a legacy of the bad blood that was created last year when the proposal to create a separate Cook Islands passport was vetoed. 

McNamee says the situation is certainly not something you would expect between close diplomatic partners like New Zealand and the Cook Islands. 

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It may be Valentine's Day but not everything in love is chocolates and roses. 

Romance scams are affecting an increasing number of Kiwis, fraudsters crafting elaborate fake relationships and emotional connections in order to convince their victims to send money.  

Last week the Herald reported on a woman who wasted two years and more than $375,000 on what turned out to be a romance scam with an impersonation of actor Martin Henderson. 

ANZ’s Head of Customer Protection Alan Thomsen told Kerre Woodham that there’s a misconception that those who fall victim to romance scams are all over the age of 60, but a third of their victims are under the age of 45.  

He says that many victims are in a vulnerable state, and it’s important for people to stop and pause before committing to anything. 

ANZ is also making an effort to educate and raise awareness around romance scams, creating a unique rose. The “Scammers Bloom”, is a beautiful long-stemmed rose - the ultimate symbol of love - and while it looks beautiful, once you get closer you realise it smells fishy.

The special blooms will be available at their pop-up shop 'Love Stinks' in Ponsonby, Auckland. 

The bouquets come with a charming collection of Valentine’s Day cards which help normalise talking about romance scams, and give people the tips to help look out for and avoid romance scams.

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We've seen floods in Europe, fires in California and in the last couple of years, weather events here at home.

As of the 1st of September 2023, insurers had paid out $2.053 billion on claims relating to the Auckland Anniversary flood and Cyclone Gabrielle.

That's expected to increase to $3.5 billion once all claims are settled. Two weather events, one small country, $3.5 billion. And represents the vast majority of insured losses recorded in the Asia Pacific region for the first half of 2023.

Insurers keep announcing they've broken new records for pay-outs. Data released by the Insurance Council of Australia last year shows that the impact of extreme weather on the Australian economy has more than tripled over the last three decades.

A couple of years ago, the Insurance Council of New Zealand reported that the total amount paid out by insurers for weather related claims in 2022 had reached a record-breaking $335.58 million. A staggering sum, a huge amount.

And then along came the Anniversary floods and Cyclone Gabrielle and made the previous year's payouts look like chump change. $335.58 million - staggering amount of money - hello $3.5 billion.

It can't go on, its unsustainable. Insurers can and have put up their premiums, but there comes a point where people can't or won't pay those premiums. Home insurance premiums rose by an average of 21.2 percent between September 2022 and 2023 quarters.

Should home insurance become unaffordable, and this has happened in other parts of the world, both unaffordable and unavailable - there may be pressure for Government intervention. That's already happened in the UK and in parts of the US, for risks that private insurers have come to regard as unaffordable in certain areas.

 Mind you, I don't know how willing the taxpayer would be to insure homeowners whose homes have been deemed uninsurable by private companies. That's just your home insurance. What about the rising cost of health insurance? Income protection insurance? Life insurance? Car insurance?

A story out today shows more people are considering changing their car insurance policy or switching to third-party coverage as premiums continue to rise. 

The latest data from insurance comparison website Quashed shows the average quote for comprehensive car insurance has increased 41 percent in two years. Average quotes for home and contents insurance have risen 31 percent over the same period. And according to Quashed, more users are looking into other options, including third-party as they face a conundrum between cheaper premiums and greater coverage.

So what do you do when the household budget is tight? Or when there are increasing pressures upon it, what gives? Say you're a young couple, two kids, car and a big mortgage. What do you do? What insurances do you pay - or what has to give?

Do you keep up the life insurance payments so that if heaven forfend one of you dies, the other isn't left with dreadful grief, parentless children and a $500K mortgage?

Do you keep up the income protection, which is incredibly expensive? So that if you get ill and you can't work, you won't lose your home and your business? Do you give up the health insurance because you're a young couple and you've got two young kids and hopefully you'll be fine? Do you go to third party with the car?

When you retire, you don't have to pay income protection anymore - so do you keep up the life insurance? Do you pay the premiums as a gift to the next generation coming up? Or do you spend it in the here and now? What do you do? Insurance is there just in case, it's an investment that you hope you never have to cash in on for most of it.

If you have to cash in on your insurance policies, chances are something's gone badly wrong. Is it a nice to have or a must have? 

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