Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast Podcast Por Newstalk ZB arte de portada

Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

De: Newstalk ZB
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Join Kerre Woodham one of New Zealand’s best loved personalities as she dishes up a bold, sharp and energetic show Monday to Friday 9am-12md on Newstalk ZB. News, opinion, analysis, lifestyle and entertainment – we’ve got your morning listening covered.2025 Newstalk ZB Ciencia Política Política y Gobierno
Episodios
  • Kerre Woodham: We need to be able to treat feral animals as pests

    Kerre Woodham: We need to be able to treat feral animals as pests
    Nov 24 2025
    Cats and dogs who are part of our families are much loved and live the life of Riley. There must be some days when your cat or dog is lying curled up in the sun with a full tummy, waiting for 3 o'clock when the kids come home and surround it with love, or waiting for you to take it for a walk, or waiting for you to sit down so it can curl up in your lap and they must think to themselves, by crikey, I struck the jackpot. I am one lucky little fur baby. But cats and dogs that have been abandoned and live miserable lives eking out an existence in the bush and on the edges of the city are dangerous pests and they're in the sights of DOC. The New Zealand Veterinary Association and its Companion Animal Veterinarian Branch are the latest organisations to come out in support of feral cats' inclusion in the Predator Free 2050 Strategy. And there have been calls for wild dogs to be officially labelled pests too, so there can be more freedom to eradicate them. With the dogs, it comes after so many attacks in the Far North, the latest, an international ultra runner and his support crew were attacked by dogs on the Te Araroa Trail in January of this year and I believe there's still a wild dog warning along the Te Paki Coastal Track near Cape Reinga. There are limited options to tackle an animal problem if it is not labelled a pest. The dogs, for instance, you can only do what DOC is doing, and that's the authorised hunts but farmers are allowed to kill dogs on their own property if they're threatening them or their animals. And there have been numerous instances of herds and flocks being savaged by these feral dogs who are starving and desperate and also don't mind a little light sport of murdering and ravaging. So farmers are able to attack those dogs. You can also humanely trap them legally. But once you put an animal into the Predator Free 2050 charter, it will align national efforts, improve clarity, and support reasonable feral animal management practices, such as desexing, microchipping and containment. The vets say feral cats, while sentient, pose a serious threat to native wildlife and are implicated in the spread of diseases such as toxoplasmosis. So cats are in, but at this stage, dogs are still out. The vets say it's critical that humane destruction methods are employed for all pests included in the strategy, and I'd support that. You don't want any animal to suffer needlessly, but a country that prides itself on its native flora and fauna, sells itself to visitors on its flora and fauna, needs to be able to control the pests that threaten that. It's the human pests who neglect their pets, who dump unwanted litters of kittens and pups who are at fault here. A Far North dog advocate says as the economy worsens and people get poorer, the situation is getting worse because people don't have the money to fence their properties, they don't have the money to feed their dogs properly, they're exhausted, so they don't walk the dogs wander. The current laws, advocates for change say, do not serve communities well and lead to inconsistencies in the way councils around the country approach the roaming dog problem. The advocate says mandatory desexing, except for dogs belonging to registered breeders, would help but the absolute key to changing behaviour is community education about how to care for dogs and be safe around them. The Far North Mayor Moko Tepania supports a push by Auckland Council for greater powers to be able to desex roaming dogs when they're picked up. So your dog might have been a fully kitted out male when you let it go wandering off your property, but it'll come back to you neutered. Same with the females. And I don't have a problem with that either. Trapping, desexing and freeing feral cats was the strategy of choice of the wealthy cat ladies who were my neighbours when I was living next to a big park in Freeman's Bay in Auckland. These beautifully dressed women would take it in turns, there was a roster, to go around Western Park, trapping the cats, taking them to the vets, paying for them to be desexed, and then they'd set them free again. 'Oh yes, they'll kill a few birds and, but, you know, ultimately it will be a problem solved in the future'. They couldn't bear to see the cats put down, even humanely, but they could live with desexing them knowing that there wouldn't be future cats who would be living on the edges of the city. I just don't think it's a viable option, given how many feral cats there are in New Zealand. Nobody knows how many. The range from 2.5 million to 14 million is so wide, it makes it meaningless, but we do need to be able to treat feral animals as pests. Cats and dogs who belong to a family get all the protection in the world. You desex them, you microchip them, you love them. Cats and dogs that are neglected, unloved, and have turned feral, they should be fair game. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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    6 m
  • Chris Hipkins: Labour Leader talks capital gains taxes, coalitions, cross-party commitments

    Chris Hipkins: Labour Leader talks capital gains taxes, coalitions, cross-party commitments
    Nov 24 2025

    Chris Hipkins says coalitions require a balance of compromise and standing by values.

    The Labour leader says New Zealanders understand the nuances of MMP and the reality that parties can't get everything they want.

    He says that means parties often can't accomplish as much as they hoped.

    But Hipkins told Kerre Woodham some things will be bottom lines.

    Hipkins says an example of that is his commitment not to have a wealth tax, which he intends to hold to.

    Hipkins isn't laying out his plan for interest deductibility but says he hears landlords' argument for it.

    National brought back the scheme after Labour removed it in 2021, but its fate is still unclear if Labour makes a comeback in 2026.

    Hipkins told Woodham the decision will come out next year in Labour's alternative budget.

    He says he's heard from landlords who couldn't continue renting out properties after Labour's change in 2021.

    WATCH ABOVE

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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    34 m
  • Kerre Woodham: Do the Kiwisaver tweaks go far enough?

    Kerre Woodham: Do the Kiwisaver tweaks go far enough?
    Nov 23 2025
    Christopher Luxon has made his party's first election promise at a Christmas gathering for the party faithful of the Lower North Island. He said that they would lift the default KiwiSaver contribution rate, and eventually the changes would mean employees would see 12% of their earnings going into KiwiSaver, 6% from them, 6% from employers - a level that would match Australia's superannuation contribution rate, although of course in Australia, the whole contribution comes from the employer because they can afford it. The figure would come from hiking the default contribution rate from 3%, where it is today, to four, then 6% by 2032. The employer contribution would also rise to 6%, achieving that combined rate of 12% by 2032. Christopher Luxon said under the changes, a 21-year-old who's earning $65,000 a year today would retire with a KiwiSaver balance of about 1.4 million, bare minimum. No one, it appears, thinks that this is a bad idea. The only concern is that the tinkering with KiwiSaver doesn't go far enough. Commentators say KiwiSaver needs to be compulsory, otherwise people would just opt out, thinking they can't afford the contributions. They do not realise when they're 21 that they can't afford not to contribute to KiwiSaver, because 65 comes far faster than you can ever possibly imagine. Others, like Milford Asset Management Kiwi Saver head Murray Harris, says National needs to look at improving other moving parts. Fundamentally, this is a good announcement, but there's a lot of moving parts with KiwiSaver. And I think what we need to see is what's the long-term strategic plan for KiwiSaver and what are the settings that are going to be set for the long-term future? Because at the moment you do have the so-called total compensation where your employer can pay you out of your pay, the employer contribution. Now that should be scrapped. That's another one of the settings that National haven't announced or included in this announcement. And there's there are others as well that we need New Zealanders to be really confident that KiwiSaver is going to be set for the future, there isn't going to be tinkering with it every time we get a change in political party, and that they can be confident that their long-term savings and retirement savings for the future are going to be as they expect. Yes. Chris Hipkins says it's a good thing to increase retirement savings. The transition is the key. The policy may encourage employers to Uberise their workforces by turning erstwhile employees into contractors. I would love to hear from those of you who have just started in the workforce perhaps, who have been in the workforce for about two or three years. Where does your pay packet go? In terms of what you're paying back. You might have a student loan. When it comes to KiwiSaver, how much can you afford to put in? Do you accept, as somebody who has just entered the workforce, that you're going to need to save for your retirement? I I'm pretty sure that message has got through to the next generation that there's going to be a real necessity for feathering your own nest. You might think when you first start off with your paying back of your student loan and the like, saving for a house, that KiwiSaver's just there to get that deposit on a home. Or you might want a couple of years of lavish spending because you've been living as a student, living on the low-cost pittas from the takeaway shop and the two-minute noodles. You want to know what it feels like to have money to splash around so you'll pay back your student loan and then you'll think about KiwiSaver. How many of you are squirrelling away your nuts, so to speak, because you understand that the sooner you start saving with compound interest, the better off you're going to be. When it comes to those who have recently retired, I'd really like to hear from you too. So you might have stopped work a couple of years ago. Do you have enough invested and saved to get by? Did it come as a bit of a shock? Or was it pretty much as you expected that with the investments you had, the savings you had, the house that you'd paid off, that combined with the super, you're just fine. There are a lot of people, I think, who don't realise that when it comes to being poor, it's pretty rubbish - but being poor and old is doubly rubbish. And unless you start saving at a very young age, even a little bit, like look at the Rich Dad Poor Dad, even putting 10 bucks a week away, getting into that habit of saving is the best thing you can possibly do for yourself. I wish I'd had it hammered home to me when I first started work. There are good savers, like being good at languages. People are who are good at budgeting, and then there are hopeless ones. But even hopeless ones need to know that even a little bit set aside every payday is going to pay off in the long run. I think that message has got through, but I'd love to hear from those of you who have just started work and those of you ...
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    7 m
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