Andrew Dickens Afternoons Newstalk ZB

A report from Auckland Council's boarding house inspectors shows out of 44 properties suspected to be breaking the law, 40 were “operating unauthorised transient accommodation or boarding houses.” 

Many had issues with fire safety breaches, growing numbers of gang-affiliated guests, and owners questioning council authority. 

Andrew Dickens had two callers today who discussed their situations. 

The first, Jamie, lives in a boarding house with his son.  

Jamie told Andrew Dickens “There’s one room here that’s $500 – the guy’s killing it,” 

Jamie said “You’re living with alcoholics and drug users. I’ve had to send my kid to his mum’s because it’s no place for a kid.” 

The second, John, owns two boarding houses and lives there himself. 

John told Andrew Dickens “When they come here, they are lost. When I give them a room, they sleep for a week - they are that exhausted.” 

John said “It’s an ideal situation to get these people off the street and give them independence.” 

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I presume the lead story in the Herald on Sunday was welcomed by police and those behind our stronger gun laws.  

An Auckland pensioner and his daughter have been caught for legally buying 13 guns for the Comancheros motorcycle gang.  

It's the latest of dozens of discoveries by police of licensed gun owners buying for gangs who cannot legally purchase guns.  

It was validation of good old-fashioned police work. Over the past 4 years the police have analysed more than 350,000 sales records looking for suspicious patterns of spending.   

They then correlate the purchases with the records of gun owners, and they discover the gang's straw buyers.  

But to me, it also validates the strengthening of the laws back in 2019 after the Christchurch mosque massacre.  

That saw the banning of military-style semi-automatics, stricter rules on the “fit and proper” test to hold a license, the establishment of a gun registry, and a set of rules designed to ensure gun clubs and ranges are safe places.  

At the time, gun owners made out that the laws criminalised legal gun owners which was a massive over-exaggeration.  It criminalised a type of gun only. A type of gun that non MSSA owners find intimidating and unnecessary. A gun that turns any idiot into a killing machine as long as they can handle the recoil.  

And the new rules also told the citizens of New Zealand that ownership of a gun is not a right but a privilege that must be earned.    

But they also say that once it's earnt there's no problem at all as long as it's not a military-style automatic.  

And slowly it's beginning to make sense to even the law's hardest detractors.  

Act campaigned on a full repeal of the legislation and the minister in charge is Act's Nicole Mckee  

She is also the former spokesperson for the council of licensed firearms owners.  

She was also interviewed in the paper yesterday where she said gun owners hoping for a rollback will be disappointed.  

Act campaigned on greater access to MSSAs and scrapping the gun registry, but these didn’t make it into coalition agreements.  

Instead, the National-Act agreement committed to repealing the regulations around gun clubs and shooting ranges - which Mckee has now backed off from doing completely - a review of the registry and a rewrite of the arms act.  

But, at the moment, the laws are being seen to work.  And here's the rub.  If you support getting tough on crime then you must also support getting tough on gun ownership. 

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Welcome to Budget Week. Which I am looking forward to.

After all the warnings from economists and world agencies like the OECD, that this is the wrong part of an economic cycle to bring in tax cuts, it ill be interesting to see the way they're going to pull it off.

Personally, I can't see the budget being nearly as harsh, nearly as radical or nearly as transformational and beneficial as all the politicians say.

I've already decided to call it the bad day at the office budget. Which we'll all get through.

Meanwhile, we're getting little bones thrown at us to keep the headlines flowing. $50 million odd to hire teachers feels like a small change when you look at the entire education wage budget.

My grizzle today is about doctors. The Waikato times weekend paper featured a couple of young doctors at Waikato Hospital and their impossible workload.

Both are just 27 years old, 4 years out of school. 10 years into learning their trade.

One ended out working alone on a cardiology ward with 100 patients in it. There should have been 3 doctors on duty.

The other, a medical registrar, told a similar story about how patients in agony in E.D spent 12 hours waiting for care.

Things are not getting better anytime soon. The population is growing, people are living longer, patients are getting sicker and arrive more sick because they haven't seen a GP. Because there's not enough GPs either.

Meanwhile our underpaid, over worked 27 year olds have 6 figure student loans to pay off. So when choosing their specialty they often choose the better paying so good by psychiatry, hello dermatology.

This perfect storm of dysfunction is the result of decisions made a long time ago. Not just the last regime.

Student debt dissuades many except the determined or the already wealthy. Limiting our doctors' numbers.

Immigration has been allowed to blow out for decades without any increase in doctors in training. So fewer doctors per person

Entry numbers to med school are still embarrassingly low. So once again fewer doctors

What have we been thinking for the past 40 years?

We have a malaise.

Not enough doctors, teachers, police, houses, roads, public transport, energy generation. The list goes on.

We're like a 2 bedroom shack trying to house 10 people in it.

But every 3 years someone comes in and wallpapers one room.

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Now, I'm not part of the tribe who automatically thinks that Auckland Transport is a bunch of ideological toss-pots who want to force us out of our cars.

I'm the sort of urbanist that gets there's a limit to the number of cars that can use our roads, and when that limit is hit then you have offer choices so we can all get somewhere.

I don't reflexively hate cycleways or bus lanes. I comprehend congestion charges and I'm excited for the Central Rail Link and even Light Rail. Mostly because I've seen the good a co-ordinated public transport system has done elsewhere in the world.

But AT's 24/7 parking charges change is beyond the pale.

Having developed the city centre with apartments, it will inconvenience residents who have been trying to take their cars off the roads by living in town. It's going to cost ratepayers. Either directly, such as the residents who reckon it will cost them $11,000 a year to park their car now. Or by funding a bureaucracy to run resident parking schemes.

It's said it will affect hospo workers. It won't stop punters who tend to cab or even use public transport into town because they're on the lash. The people it will really affect are the minimum waged workers who need to get in and out of the city outside public transport times - and who are least able to afford it.

But the most chilling part of the story is that the mayor and the Council are powerless to stop it, even though they've helped to cause the problem.

Councils fund council controlled organisations but they don't run them. In this case, the Council looked to reduce its funding so AT unilaterally increased its external fundraising by hiking the parking charges.

But that is AT’s constitutional right. The main Council body, including the elected representatives, have no operational control.

Rodney Hide designed them that way so politicians couldn't get the filthy, compromised hands on big assets.

Which is why I've always laughed about National's plan for council controlled operations to run all our water.

Councils may own and fund CCOs, but they certainly don't control them.

Just look at Auckland Transport.

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I was surprised that the news that Auckland had inked a deal with the Government over water wasn't the lead story on last night's TV news.

I would have thought that John Campbell would have had a deep dive on its repercussions for Auckland and the country.

Basically, water and housing are the biggest issues for this country because every single person, business and animal needs water - and we all need a roof over our head.

But maybe the kids we call journalists these days have never got water and its reforms.

There is a lot about the deal that has not been said.

Compared to 3 Waters, it's essentially 2 waters.

Watercare deals with drinking water and human waste. Waste is sewage.

That's a billion-dollar-a-year operation.

But they don't deal with stormwater and drains. That's called sewerage and that's dealt with in Auckland by an entity called Healthy Waters. Now that's a $200 million dollar a year operation. It's not a council controlled operation. It will still be funded by council borrowings.

So when people talk about polluted waterways being fixed, that's not really covered by the Watercare deal. Which is partly why Auckland's water rates increases are still at 7.3 percent.

That 7.3 percent is, as we all know, higher than the rate of inflation and a major part of the cost-of-living crisis which the Government promised to tackle. But that's another kettle of wastewater.

This deal happened because Auckland is the only council with CCO or council controlled organisations. They are the product of Auckland's amalgamation into a Super City by Rodney Hide. CCOs were actually designed to prevent Councillors fooling about in core business they know nothing about. And because of that they've never been overly popular. Yet it is claimed that this keeps water under local control.

Ask Auckland's Mayors and Councillors about how much control they really exert over CCO's like Watercare, or Auckland Transport, or Auckland Unlimited.

So, Watercare will have the remit, which is to provide water and remove waste. Operationally, they're in full control of their processes. The Council's control is limited to a majority of places on the board. So just a reminder that CEOs run companies not boards. They purely appoint a CEO and then assess how well the CEO has done.

The Auckland deal was low hanging fruit for the Government, because the structure was already in place. The real test is how this works for everywhere else in New Zealand.

The first real test will come this week when Horowhenua, Kapiti, Wairarapa, the Hutt Valley, Porirua and Wellington City meet on Friday to work together on a plan for a greater Wellington region water deal.

They will have to set up an entity with bureaucracy and thrash out a deal about which region receives what in funding. Just like 3 Waters.

Meanwhile, the good people in the countryside not adjacent to cities will be wondering if there's any white knights riding to their rescue regarding water borrowing. Or if they're going to be left behind.

To me this deal is 3 Waters lite, with no ‘co-governance’. And that's it.
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New Zealand seems to be waking up to an issue I thought would have caused more concern.

As part of the bonfire of the public service, the Government seems to be eyeing cuts to our public research and development sector.

Principally that means the Callaghan Institute, the Crown agency that employs about 300 people and has been the target of attack, particularly from David Seymour.

He sees the agency's work as being a form of corporate welfare, a bugbear of ACT's.

Other ministries and departments conduct significant research funded by the taxpayer. The Department of Conservation has developed major techniques and processes that have been adopted around the world.

The Primary Industries ministry also funds valuable research, including work into climate change mitigation.

It's feared that all this work will be affected as the Government saves costs in the backroom.

Last week, Stats NZ revealed that private industry is starting to put their money where their mouth is.

The New Zealand business sector has shown a robust increase in research and development (R&D) spending, reaching a new high of $3.7 billion in 2023.

That's $540 million increase, or 17 percent, from the previous year, marking the largest annual growth since annual data collection began in 2018.

There's value in research spending. So it would be short-sighted to reduce Governmental spending on it

R&D funding cuts could mean we will lose our best and brightest scientists, like those at Callaghan, to overseas countries who are investing in science.

As we enter a regime determined to cut spending I think it's good to remember a famous quote by Oscar Wilde.

He said - " a fool is a person who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing".

The worry is that the Government goes too far and starts to cut things of value.

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