Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast Newstalk ZB

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. 

I

I know we have no money.  I know the government is in dire straits and making really tough decisions when it comes to spending and where that spending is targeted, but I will be so sad if First Home Grants is one of the schemes that gets cut in the review of housing projects that is under way. The review is necessary because the previous government and its agents mismanaged Kainga Ora to the extent that New Zealanders not even born yet will be paying off its debts. If it hadn’t gotten into so much trouble, there would be more money to go around and go around everywhere. 

And I know —we were having the conversation yesterday— that there is a desperate need for social housing. But surely there is also a moral imperative to acknowledge people who are doing the right thing, who are working hard, who are saving , who are young, who are the future of this country. They don't have addictions, they don't appear before the courts, they’re not ‘victims’. They simply want to live a good life, look after themselves, look after their families, enjoy their mates, and enjoy all this country has to offer. All those good kids who make up the majority of New Zealanders. And you might say that living well is its own reward, but at a time when housing is so prohibitively expensive every little bit helps, and would it really hurt the country if we diverted $60 million of the housing budget to first home buyers to reward them for their discipline and hard work? 

When you are getting together the deposit for your first home, you’re scratching, you haven’t been working that long, you’ve paid off your student loan —if you had one— or if you’ve been in the trades you’ve been living at home and saving the money you get and putting it in a pot. You’re not going out and you’re making the right choices, and you’re getting that money together. Having a grant of $5000 for an existing home or $10,000 for a new build to first home buyers who meet the income threshold is a really powerful incentive to have a stake in this country. To not take off and chase the money overseas. 

Those young people are saying we believe in this country, and we believe in sticking here, and we believe in putting down roots, and having a home, and having a family, and staying here and contributing. And I would love to see that those grants stay because there’s precious little for people who are doing the right thing.  

The coalition is reviewing all housing support initiatives, and it was Shane Jones’ loose lips who dropped the fact that first-home grants might be under it. Labour's housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said scrapping the grants would be a cynical move.  McAnulty said the scheme, which was originally started by the previous National government, was a good idea, and Labour had expanded on it. I really do think there needs to be room within the government, not just to focus on the minority who cost us so much money, so much of our taxes goes towards people who are doing the wrong thing, who make mistakes, who deliberately set about, you know, imploding, destructing, destroying their lives, so much of the money goes there. 

What about the quiet, hardworking, good young men and women who don’t want government help per se, but an acknowledgement that they are able to be disciplined, and thrifty, and hardworking, and we say as fellow taxpayers, hey, thank you very much. Here’s a tiny bit towards your first home. Thank you for staying here, thank you for putting down roots in this community and contributing to a future New Zealand.  

We’ve had far too many fatted calves slaughtered for the prodigal sons, sometimes the hardworking son who stays on the farm and fulfils his obligations deserves a reward too.   
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