Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast Newstalk ZB

A petition has been set up asking for students on placement to receive a stipend from the Government, because as part of their qualifications many students, like those in healthcare, social work, and education, are required to complete unpaid placements to practically apply what they've learnt. And it's a really, really good idea because quite often, the theory bears no real relation to reality. You might think you want to be a nurse, and then you're in amongst the blood and the gore and you think, ‘maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe I'll go to being a researcher, apply all that knowledge and learning to being a researcher rather than being at the grunt end of things.’ So, you need to know what you're getting yourself in for, otherwise it can be a waste of training.  

However, masters student Bex Howells says unpaid placements are causing huge financial hardship for students. They need to take on extra work to pay their bills, but if you're working all day, studying the rest, you've got between the hours of 1am and 3am to find work. So, eight months ago Bex started Paid Placements Aotearoa as a social media movement to get students paid for their placements, and that led her to launch a petition to get students in health care, social work, and education paid for the work that they do.  

It's not a new idea. As of next year, the Australian government will pay teachers, midwives, and nurses $320 a week (that would be $350 odd New Zealand dollars a week) during their mandatory placements, but it will be means tested. So, campaigners and students here have been fighting for a similar payment. Previous Health Minister Andrew Little had considered it for 3rd year students. Bex Howells says there are ways and means to make a stipend work.  

“My proposal is that we pay students a stipend, which effectively is like topping up their study link allowance so that they're being paid at least equivalent to the minimum wage because they have huge amounts of costs involved with training on top of actually doing the unpaid labour, and they need to be able to meet those costs of training so that they can actually prioritise learning and working rather than survival.” 

Yes. So, I mean, I think we all know that a lot of the med students, the nursing students, the midwifery students are really putting in the hours and to all intents and purposes they’re another set of trained hands on the wards, and yet they're not. They're supposed to be students, they're supposed to be learning, they're supposed to be shadowing. She says we pay police to train, we pay prison officers, customs officers, the military, yet for some reason, if you're a nurse, a teacher, a social worker, or a midwife you're not paid to train.   

We heard from a couple of people a few years ago who were in just this bind. Living in and training in one city but their placement’s in another city, so they have to give up a flat or else they have to keep paying for the flat while finding alternative accommodation in the city or town that they're being placed in. You're not always placed just down the road from where you live, so it's an extra financial burden on top of what is already a tough time, and yet you're expected to work. You're not expected to just sit there taking notes.  

So, it seems reasonable, does it not, to give them a bit more than the student allowance? A number of these students, these teachers, these midwives are older. They're coming into it as a second career. So, they might have children and childcare, and it's a huge juggling act. And that's their choice and they know to a certain extent what they're getting into, but I don't think anybody has any real idea till you're in the thick of it. And great if you've got the Bank of Mum and Dad, supportive parents that you can tap into, but we don't want these careers only open to those families who can afford to subsidise their children on behalf of the rest of the taxpayers. We're all going to b

One of the best teachers at my daughter’s intermediate school, Ponsonby Intermediate, was a former chippy-turned-teacher.

He was a great example of somebody who'd trained in one career then decided to move into another — teaching. And there's a whole bunch of kids who are very, very glad he made that choice.

It was a great pre-Budget announcement from Erica Stanford, who said yesterday $53 million will be going towards recruiting and training teachers, teachers who are desperately needed in all sectors of education and specifically looking at people who have trained in one career, and wanting to move into teaching.

So there'll be more places available within the classroom for people who are looking to change careers or return. And this is especially important too I think, after the Education Review Office report a week or so ago said too many new teachers feel poorly prepared for their jobs. Remember that one?

The ARO said 60 per cent of the principals it interviewed said new teachers were not ready. Over a third of teachers said they were not able to manage classroom behaviour when they started in the role. A third of new primary school teachers said they were unprepared to teach science, and presumably maths as well.

Education Minister Erica Stanford says over the next three years we need to find an estimated 680 more secondary teachers. And while it would be ideal to train New Zealanders to fill those places, there simply isn't time and we have to look at other options.

“There is a demand for teachers coming in from offshore, especially since we moved the secondary school teachers straight to residence pathway on the green list. I did that because those numbers of secondary school teachers’ prediction over the next three years is quite grim. We're looking to be about 680 short, we can't train our way out of that. We are going to need to supplement it with some overseas teachers. And so there is quite good demand. But you know, of course I'd much rather train local people and that's why this on site training program is exciting because a lot of the people have been using it so far in the small scale trial, the mid career change people who decided to leave accounting or whatever they were doing and come and give back to young people.”

Great idea. That was Erica Stanford Education Minister talking to Mike Hosking this morning.

The way we train teachers, I think we have recognised, is not ideal. Our young people who are going from school into education, some of them will adapt amazingly. Some are finding that managing classroom behaviour, realising that there are deficiencies in their own education so you can't teach something you do not know or do not understand, even when you have the resource material if you don't understand what you're teaching, you're not going to be able to impart that to the kids.

I think if you come into teaching with a little bit of life experience, a little bit of understanding of how to work with all types of people, if you have your own children, that might give you another facet when it comes to your interaction with the children.  

You don't have to have your own children to be a good teacher, but having all types of humans teaching, I think, is a very good thing for our kids.

If you've got all sorts of people, a broad spectrum of people, different ages. You know everyone will have their own particular passion subject. This is a good thing.

And I'd love to know if you have ever thought about changing careers and moving into teaching. If you come from a family of educators, then it's likely that you either become an educator yourself or you say I never I am never going to do it, but always at the back of your mind you're thinking maybe, just maybe?

I come from a family of teachers as well and I've always thought I would love to be in the classroom but I think I'd be hopeless because I'd have favourites and if they didn't want to learn, I'd think well bugger you then, go a

Firearm-owners say they aren't reaching out when struggling, for fear their firearms could be taken away by police.

With an estimated one in five people struggling with mental illness each year, that means up to 50,000 licence holders refusing to seek the help they might need.

General Practice NZ Chair and Porirua GP Dr Bryan Betty joined Kerre Woodham.

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Resource Minister Shane Jones is all for opening up our extraction industries.  

He says New Zealand has an opportunity to double the value of its mineral exports and mine for elements that are heavily sought after for electric technologies. He released a minerals strategy document with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) yesterday and has been consistent with making a strong case for mining - New Zealand has a rich history of mining and the sector has played a significant role in how the country has developed over the past 200 years. He said that Māori excavated pounamu, obsidian, and adzite and they used them for tools, weapons, and ornaments. Then when the Europeans arrived, they found gold and coal. He says the mineral sector exported just over $1 billion in 2022, and Jones hopes to see that number double by 2035, that would see an annual growth rate of just over 7% every year.  

He has acknowledged that mistakes have been made in the past around unsafe working environments and environmental despoilment but says the industry and regulators have learned from those mistakes and won’t make them again. The Chief Executive of Energy Resources Aotearoa John Carnegie says the industry is ready to go.  

“It’s about having the right conditions in place, and the government’s taking all the right steps to ensure that those things can be unlocked. So, yeah, I’m certainly more positive, you know. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t utilize the wealth that’s under our feet. Export, we, we, have high grade coking coal, and coal used in steelmaking. We export that, there’s no reason why we can’t export a lot more of it. And we have a rich set of resources of critical minerals which we should explore that will help us with developing our technology, and renewable space batteries, wind turbines, so on and so forth.” 

That’s John Carnegie, the Chief Executive of Energy Resources Aotearoa talking to Mike Hosking this morning. 

Now, naturally you’ve got people who are utterly opposed to anything being dug out of the ground. Forest and Bird is one of them. Hardly a surprise. Richard Capie saying the plan is a “love letter” to offshore mining companies. He said we’re living in a climate and biodiversity crisis, in a country with the highest proportion of threatened species in the world, where all types of public conservation land are valuable and home to endangered plants and animals. 

However, Shane Jones is having no truck with that. He says the lands been mined before; it can be mined again. Opening up our land and seas to mining will create regional jobs, economic resilience, and will mean the country is not relying on minerals extracted under poor conditions overseas. And that’s where he’s got a point. Like, you know, would I be happier if not one leafy piece of grass in New Zealand was dug up and overturned? And yes, you know, let nature do its thing and let it be beautiful and fabulous, but then that means I can’t drive a car. I can’t heat my house, I can't use the mobile phone, because if you accept that other people can do it, other people can do it overseas, over there where I can’t see it, that is so hypocritical. If you’re going to be utterly passionate about extraction industries being bad, surely you have to follow through on that, all extraction anywhere is bad, don’t you? 

And if you’re talking about unsafe mining practices, you know, unsafe working conditions and unsafe workplace practices, do any of these passionate young greenies who are so against New Zealand being opened up to mining look at the conditions that young African kids are working in overseas, in the mines. Just pick a country in Africa, any country, it’s been raped and pillaged for hundreds of years. And the children there don’t have the option of wagging school, they’re sent down to the mines. And if they’re quite happy using their mobile phones to message each ot

Parts of our economy are continuing to provide inflation pressures for the Reserve Bank.  

It's decided to keep the OCR at 5.5% and has signalled a rate cut no sooner than the second quarter of next year. 

The move to keep the OCR the same was anticipated, but many were hoping for rate cuts to come earlier. 

Corelogic’s Chief Property Economist Kelvin Davidson told Kerre Woodham that this is the monetary policy tightening cycle in action. 

He said you have to squeeze the economy a bit to get inflation down, which means that a lot of people are doing it tough as a result. 

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I first heard the catchphrase Survive to 25 when I was talking to be at large, Liam Dann.  It appears to have come out of the US and implies that if mortgagees and small businesses can just hang on till next year things will start to come right. Because let's face it, we're not going to see interest rates drop any time soon. Despite some of the banks predicting that there would be a drop in mortgage interest rates towards the end of the year, the Reserve Bank poured cold water on that. Great for those with term deposits, less welcome news for anyone with debt.   

Finance Minister Nicola Willis made it abundantly clear that the Reserve Bank had just one job and that was to get inflation back to target - 3 then 2%. She says the tax cuts will not be inflationary because the government itself has really cut back on its spending. That they’re not borrowing, she says, to pay for tax cuts, they’re coming from savings. And she says that most people who receive the tax cuts will use them to pare down debt, so it’s not going to be inflationary. Adrian Orr is not budging, so people are just going to have to white-knuckle it to the end.  

You have to wonder what is the end? What is it gonna look like? What’s the trading landscape going to look like by the time we hit 2025? Some people have used up all their reserves. I’ve heard from some traders, some small business owners that things need to turn, and need to turn pretty quick. Consumer confidence needs to pick up for businesses to survive. Forget ‘survive to 25’, they’re just hoping to survive the next three months. But is it an unequal recession as well? Are some businesses going gangbusters while others are doing it tough?  

For those with mortgages, if the Reserve Bank keeps the OCR at 5.5% until September of next year, many borrowers are going to be caught short when they come to refix their loans. Borrowers have, for some time, been betting on the OCR falling sometime soon, sometime this year. Since the start of last year, people are just fixing for one year. I was talking to some young colleagues in the newsroom. They’ve got mortgages coming up in a few months, they’re going to fix for a year, hoping that by next year things will look better.  

Survive to 25. The popularity of one-year mortgages has taken off since the start of the year. Fixing for six months has become more common at the cost of two-year mortgages. So if you have a mortgage coming up and it needs to be refixed, are you going to go for the six month, the one-year, the two year? If you are a small business owner, ‘Survive to 25’, is that your mantra? Is that the reason to hold on, that by the time we get to 2025, things will have improved? Consumers will have a bit more in their pocket, they’ll have a bit more money around for treats like bouquets of flowers, new pair of shoes, that sort of thing. 

We hear all the decision makers having their say, making their predictions, implementing their policy, having their reckons because ultimately, that’s all they are about: what is it going to do to the economy long term? But for those of us at the business end of things, at the sharp end of things, where are you at? Can you survive through to 25? And for those who've been around for a while who've been in business for a while, how does doing business now compare to doing business during the global financial crisis? That was a tough time with unemployment, with an absolute contraction of the economy, with businesses wondering how they were going to survive.  

There is still, as I mentioned the other day, incredible young people who are opening businesses, who have faith, and optimism, and belief that they have a product or a service that is amazing, that people will want to buy. That they will be able to make a living doing what they’re good at, doing what they love. Even in this market, there are baby businesses being born every day. 

There is so much to battle. 

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