If Trump's envoys weren't talking to Iranian officials, who the hell were they talking to? When you get older, you expect that you can make more sense of the world, but I've got to be honest here, I am struggling to make sense of anything. I was reading the headlines at about 5 this morning. Trump talking about the good and productive talks having been conducted by special envoy Steve Witkoff, his son in law Jared Kushner. There'll be no nukes. No, the Iranians have said, yep, absolutely, we'll open the Straits of Hormuz and there's no nukes.

So that's good. It's a great way to start the day, until you then read that Iran's Parliamentary Speaker says, um, no, no talks have happened. It's all fake news. Normally, you could understand perhaps that talks have taken place and that people might take different messages out of the discussions or things might be highlighted and others glossed over to show respective countries in good light. But in this case, they're saying it didn't happen at all.

Got to admit, that was a head scratcher. Whether the talks happened or not, Trump's announcement that somebody had talked to somebody on Truth Social led to a US stock market rally and global oil prices to drop as fears were assuaged that Trump would now not go ahead with his threat to bomb Iranian nuclear power facilities. Who knows? Honestly, who knows what's true and what is not? There's very little we can do. We don't even, we can't even begin to speculate as to who might have been talking to whom.

In the meantime, here at the bottom end of the world, as we deal with the fallout and wait for sanity to prevail, the Government's expected to announce a support package for families today with an emphasis on low to middle income households and working families with children. The emphasis is on low to middle income. It's also on temporary support, so that temporary, timely, targeted support.

If you are in a low to middle income household, if you are working parents with children, do you welcome such support? Is it right and proper that the focus be on working families rather than all and sundry? I tend to think it is. Is it right and proper that any such support is offered at all? I know there are grave fears from some that this is just another Covid situation where money is being sprayed everywhere. That is not the case.

There are no payments being made to everybody. Remember the payments that were made to dead people? The IRD said and Treasury said, I don't think this is a very good idea. No, no, let's just dole out the money. There were Covid payments made to businesses on a high trust model. Payments were made to everybody under a certain income at one point. Remember those? Even to dead people. We're not doing that. This is not what it's about. It's about targeted assistance for working families who are having to pay through the nose at the pump to get to work, to get the kids to school.

And all of those who say, well, we weathered stock market crises and the global financial crisis. Yep, sure you did. High interest rates. Absolutely you did. But this is coming on five years of just knock after knock after knock after knock for people trying to do the right thing. So I'm okay with it. It's not normally something I would advocate, but in this instance, I think it is necessary for all those workers who are absolutely essential, who have to live out of the main centres because of the cost of housing, who don't have public transport to be able to get from point A to point B, who need to get their kids to school, who just want to be able to go to work and earn enough to look after themselves and their family. A little bit of targeted assistance out of the enormous extra tax money that's coming in from the government's fuel tax is fine by me.

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The Green Party is offering its support to National to fast-track a fossil fuel relief package, bypasssing other parties with their combined 63 votes.

The proposal includes three months of free public transport, a windfall tax on fuel companies, and targeted payments for rural and low-income earners.

The Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick told Kerre Woodham, "we have put a sensible and urgent fossil fuel crisis relief package on the table, and we're really willing and able to work with the National Party to make it happen."

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To me, what is news is the fact that there are so many people who are working vital jobs, who are doing incredibly important work like our home support workers, and they are really struggling because of the petrol prices. That to me is news, and that to me is something we can do something about. That is going to impact us all as petrol prices surge past three bucks a litre. Sky appears to be the limit. It's going to impact all of us, even the EV drivers who'll end up paying more for anything that's delivered by road. But it's the people like the home support workers who rely on their own cars and fuel to visit their clients that you worry about. It's particularly tough.

Their union, E tū, is urging the Minister of Health to step in and increase the mileage reimbursement rate for home support workers. There is a review scheduled of travel payments before the 20th of May, but for many that'll be too late. Home support workers are currently reimbursed at 63.5 cents per kilometre, averaged to 3.8kms per visit regardless of the actual distance, unless they reach a specific threshold. The rate was last increased in 2022 – things are vastly different now. Workers receive nothing towards vehicle registration, warrant, servicing, tyres, or insurance, all of which they must cover themselves. Freight companies have contracts that enable them to hedge their fuel costs, but of course home support workers don't.

At what point is it actually costing you to go to work? There was a text a few days ago from, I think it was a St John trainer, but they were a person who taught CPR and they have to wander around with a dummy to do the CPR on and said they couldn't catch the bus, but I felt that if you put the dummy next to you on the bus then you wouldn't have to sit next to someone you didn't want to. Thought that would be a useful shield. But they were saying they have to go city to city, Auckland to Hamilton, Auckland to Tauranga. At what point does it cost you to go to work? At what point do you say I simply cannot afford to do this? And there are so many workers who need their cars to either do the job, as in our home support carers, or to get to work. You're living somewhere where the rent is cheaper or the cost of a home is cheaper, but you have to drive a long way to get to your actual place of work.

In this week's edition of Fuel Watch, I'm asking at what point do you think ‘I simply cannot afford to do my job any longer or to get to work any longer’? Have you reached that point yet? I mean we're past $3, I think, at one of the cheapest fuel stations, this was for 95 though, it was $3.26. Hitting $4 is not beyond the realm of possibility. At what point are you going to go I can't do this anymore? E tū are saying the Government, the Minister of Health, needs to step in and help out the home support workers whose work is vital. Without them you would have people in wards, in hospitals, clogging them up. You need to have that continuum of care starting with GPs working your way through to the home support workers. They're a vital part of the chain.

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Political appointments are being scrutinised after the resignation of KiwiRail director Scott O’Donnell due to conflicts of interest.

Political analyst Bryce Edwards described the appointment as a “farce”, and the result of a broken system and “rotten governance.”

O’Donnell is a major player in the trucking and transport sector, and some of the ten companies he’s involved in supply services to KiwiRail – though a management plan was put in place to mitigate that.

While he doesn’t think there should be a rule against political appointments, Edwards told Kerre Woodham that there needs to be better processes and more scrutiny.

He says at the moment, any government of the day can get away with whatever they want.

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What I found more outrageous on the internet yesterday was yet another example of this country's propensity for doling out jobs for the boys and indeed the girls. Every political party does it, every government does it, rewards the party faithful and their generous donors and backers with cushy sinecures. Grafter-in-chief would have to be Trevor Mallard's posting to Dublin – although would it? Because there are plenty of other opportunities to point the finger. Look at Simon Bridges, the ex-National Party leader was appointed as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency, Waka Kotahi, in March 24.

There are many, many examples of political cronyism. And in the latest one, a KiwiRail director has quit the board two years early after only a couple of months in the role. That's not the news. What is news is that he was appointed to the board at all given his conflict of interest. Scott O'Donnell is a big player in trucking and freight. And given some of the 10 companies he's involved with supply services to KiwiRail, what on earth was he doing being made a director of KiwiRail? The conflicts required Treasury to put a management plan in place.

The conflict of interest mitigation plan contained seven measures to manage conflicts, including recusing himself from board meeting discussions where there was a conflict of interest. It was simply unsustainable. He was being paid to do a job that he simply could not do because of the conflicts of interest. He ended up leaving meetings early and missing agenda items and, you know, became apparent that this wasn't going to work. He'll be stepping down next week and thanked for his service. But he should never ever have been appointed in the first place.

So not only are there existing conflicts of interest, he's one of four directors of HW Richardson's Transport Tapunui, which donated $20,000 to New Zealand First in July 2024. The company's also involved in a project that recently received a government regional infrastructure loan, Shane Jones slush fund of $8 million. And then he's appointed by Winston to the board of KiwiRail. It's just another example and it's so common that it barely registered. I mean, I have to give credit to Radio New Zealand who were following this all the way through and BusinessDesk pointing it out going, No, no, no, this isn't good, this isn't right, this doesn't work.

Do we have so few people in this country of five million who can do governance jobs and chief executive jobs that we have to accept there'll only be one or two degrees of separation, if that? That there is always going to be a conflict? If you think of the five million of us, how many of us could do a chief executive job or be on a board, take a director's role on a board?

Look at the yawning vacancies that we have for our major companies, with a new one with Fonterra now. I mean, Miles Hurrell could walk into about 20 jobs in this country right now, either in sports governance or in business. There are so few people able to do the job. Do we have to accept that there is going to be a conflict of interest in just about every single appointment made?

Do more of us have to put up our hands and do the directors' courses so that you can find maybe somebody somewhere who doesn't, hasn't made a donation or hasn't worked or hasn't been a politician who can then do the job? Or are we just simply too small?

How we haven't appeared on the dirt list of corruption is beyond me. It shows either a really, really principled closed doors approach to business in this country, being able to separate your different business interests and focus on them solely and leave everything at the door when you go in, or we just haven't uncovered it yet. I'd really love to see an end of the appointments of jobs for the girls and the boys, but then who would do the job when you look at the vacancies that exist right now.

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Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage is removing the Ngā Tapuwae Heritage Trails website for Gallipoli and the Western Front in what Historian Chris Pugsley believes is a cost cutting measure and a result of firing historians.

Pugsley spoke to Kerre Woodham, slamming the move.

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