Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast Newstalk ZB

BrainFit Coach Jude Walter is here to talk us through staying on top of your brain health. 
Is it really a case of use it or lose it when it comes to our brains? Spoiler alert – it is!  
Click here to order the Brainfit Book Worm Winter Bundle ( 2x best selling books) for just $65 (ex. postage) when you use the promo code: bookworm  
Click here to enroll in the Memory Tune online course. Just $100 (ex. postage of supporting workbook) when you use the promo code: memory 
LISTEN ABOVE. 
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A familiar voice is back with us...  Allyson Gofton!   
Allyson Gofton has been cooking for New Zealanders for nearly 30 years. She is known for her recipes and columns in magazines. 
We are constantly talking about the cost of living and grocery prices going up – Allyson will have some tips and tricks to make your dollars go further at the supermarket.   
LISTEN ABOVE. 
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mark Vette is an internationally renowned animal behaviourist, trainer, educator, author and TV personality. 
He’s also the founder of Dog Zen, a dog training programme.  
Mark joins Francesca Rudkin on Newstalk ZB to take your calls about your pet’s behaviour. 
LISTEN ABOVE. 
 
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I thought we'd have a look at the plans to amend New Zealand sentencing laws.  
National, ACT, and New Zealand First campaigned on the law-and-order ticket. Tougher sentences, consequences for serial youth offenders, safer communities. It is their thing, all of their parties, this is what they do. Let's get tough on crime whenever there's an election campaign. But given that there had been an increase in crime during the last six years, crime had been steadily going down and then it did not. There was a 70% increase in gang membership, violent crime was up by a third, 100% increase in retail crime, and I would venture to suggest even more than that, just people weren't reporting it.  
A majority of people were feeling less safe on the streets, in their businesses, in their homes. It was a safe bet that voters would respond to a let's get tough on crime stance and now the coalition government is delivering on its campaign promises. They will cap sentence discounts that judges can apply to 40% of the maximum unless it results in manifestly unjust sentencing outcomes. Prevent repeat discounts for youth and remorse. That's good. Introduce a new aggravating factor to address offences against sole charge workers and those whose home and businesses are interconnected (that would be the dairy owners). Encouraging the use of cumulative sentencing for offences committed while on bail, in custody or on parole, so rather than it being three sentences of six years and they're all served concurrently, it would be 18 years, not three lots of six.   
At the moment a lot of concurrent is done. A maximum sentence discount of 25% for early guilty pleas, reducing to 5% if a guilty plea is entered once the trials begun. And adding a requirement for judges to take information about the victim's interests into account. Convener of the Law Society's Criminal Committee, Chris Macklin, sounded a note of caution on the Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning.  
“Oh well look, it's early days. You say these things are coming and of course they are, they do still need to go through Select Committee. The signal is clear that tougher sentences are coming, whether that achieves exactly what people want will be the acid test, and that will be reducing people's experience of crime. There's a worry that some areas of offending might be less accurately reported if tougher sentences appeared. I think there's a concern about undermining restorative and rehabilitative purposes of sentencing.  And the profession probably needs to highlight as well to the extent it can, it's by no means clear the tougher things to do to effectively some of the crimes we're talking about.”  
I don't know about you. But I am not supportive of these raft of measures because I think it will bring down crime. That will have to happen in other areas. More support for at risk families, getting kids back into school and actually teaching them something to give them more options, that sort of thing. Alcohol and drug rehabilitation. Mr Macklin, I am not naïve. I know criminals won't suddenly stop and go, well best not beat up that pensioner because I'm going to spend longer in jail. I support the tougher sentences because I am sick and tired of the hurt perpetuated by people who do it time and time, and crime and crime again. I want to see them punished for that.  
There's a million cases we can point to but remember the case of the teen Mongrel Mob member who broke into the home of a pregnant woman and indecently assaulted her and the bed she was sharing with her child? He was sentenced for breaking into a home and then sexually assaulting a pregnant woman. He was sentenced to 12 months home detention. And as Stevie Taunoa, 19, thanked the judge and walked from the dock and to the police cells, he yelled, “cracked it”. So, the discount he got for his youth and remorse doesn't seem to be very genuine, does it? I don't want to see gangsters gloating about how they've gam

It's estimated New Zealand throws away $3.2 billion of food every year. 
The Prime Minister's Chief Science Advisor, Dame Juliet Gerrard, has issued 27 recommendations to the Government. 
It calls for a national plan and target, smarter monitoring, better strategies to tackle food loss at source, promoting food rescue and upcycling to ensure edible food isn’t thrown out. 
KiwiHarvest is a food rescue business, taking food that is still perfectly usable so it doesn’t get thrown away and giving it to charities and institutions where it would be of use. 
CEO Angela Calver told Kerre Woodham that the best way to stop wastage in your home is to meal plan and plan ahead. 
She said that a lot of waste happens because of demand, supermarkets doing their best to ensure that if you buy a loaf of bread today, that loaf of bread will be on the shelf tomorrow as well. 
Calver said that planning and not over-buying food will help further down the supply chain and reduce waste. 
LISTEN ABOVE 
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A second Covid inquiry has been announced. And while that may sound like two Covid inquiries too many, this one may well get the answer a lot of us are looking for. New Zealand First has invoked the Agree to Disagree clause that allows a party within a coalition government to disagree in relation to issues on which the parties wish to maintain a different position in public. Generally, in a coalition agreement you like to present a united front, but when there are real disagreements, the clause can be invoked and that is what Peters has done.  
He wanted the first inquiry scrapped, saying it was nothing more than a political tool being used to craft a message through its limited scope and the lack of suitability of the Commissioners. The chair is epidemiologist Professor Tony Blakely, who advised during the pandemic, the economist John Whitehead, and former National MP Hekia Parata. He's not wrong, though. Unlike most other recent Royal Commissions, New Zealand's focus is explicitly on planning for the next pandemic, rather than assigning blame for any failings from the decision makers. It's like oh well, that happened, let's look ahead and see what we can do next time around. Its full name is “New Zealand Royal Commission Covid -19 Lessons Learned”, and the parliamentary order bringing it into being describes its intentions as examining the lessons learned from Aotearoa New Zealand's response to Covid-19 that should be applied in preparation for any future pandemic.  
So there would be no blame, no finger pointing, no public floggings in the public square. Really, it would be more like a series of patsy questions in Parliament. Did you do well? [Previous Labour government]. Thank you. Just how well did you think you did? [Previous Labour government]. What learnings do you think you can take forward? How many lives were saved? [Labour government]. You know, that sort of thing.  
Now Brooke van Velden, Internal Affairs Minister, says that when this inquiry finishes its work a second one will get under way and this one will ask the hard questions. 
 
“Where I think people are looking for more focus and what Phase Two will focus on, are things like the government's response and how that was weighed up against education, health, business, inflation. What its response did to debt and business activity? The social division that was caused in our society, and importantly also touches on New Zealand First’s commitment where they wish to look into vaccine efficacy. So it's a bit broader in range and I think answers a lot of those questions that will be on the top of people's minds. Was the government too fixated on just one aspect of its response?” 
 
And I think that's a reasonable question. That was Brooke van Velden talking to Mike Hosking this morning. I think those are really relevant questions. The vaccine efficacy and safety, the extended lockdowns in Auckland, in Northland. Now that we have the luxury of hindsight, you have to look and say, okay was that worth it? Was having borders at the Bombay Hills worth it?  
I'd be really interested to know whether there's any explanation for ‘the computer says no’ letters that so many families were given when they couldn't be with loved ones who were very, very ill or dying. Despite the fact that they were vaccinated, the family they were going to were vaccinated, there was just a simple computer say no denial from MBIE, a nameless official at MBIE, saying they could not be with a dying family member, or somebody who was very, very ill. And the pain that that caused was immeasurable. The grief that that generated was immeasurable. So I'd really love to know how you made the decision and who these faceless, nameless people were at MBIE who just deny, deny, denied access across the border, which all sounds incredibly weird.  
You know, I think you have to ask those questions before you can move forward. I don't know that it's going to resolve anything. I