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Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

By: 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.2026 Newstalk ZB Political Science Politics & Government
Episodes
  • Kerre Woodham: The fuel relief package is simply a morale booster

    Kerre Woodham: The fuel relief package is simply a morale booster
    Mar 25 2026
    So help is on the way from the Government, as expected. The announcement came around 12:30pm yesterday. Thought it might be too late, because according to Donald Trump, “me and the Ayatollah are going to be controlling the Straits of Hormuz”. Be open very soon, he says. Well, that's good, isn't it? But in the meantime, while we wait for that to eventuate, Donald Trump and the Ayatollah cutting the ribbon over the Straits of Hormuz, 140,000 New Zealand families with kids will receive an extra $50 per week through the boost in the in-work tax credit. Christopher Luxon and Finance Minister Nicola Willis outlined the support package at Parliament yesterday. They said there will be some people who'll be disappointed, but it's a responsible decision that avoids hiking inflation, which the Reserve Bank Governor was warning about yesterday. The increase will begin from April 7th and it'll be paid weekly or fortnightly, depending on when people are paid. There'll be 143,000 families receiving it, as well as about 14,000 families who'll receive the credit but not as much – it'll be an abated rate. Beneficiaries and superannuitants won't receive the boost. The Government says, well, your payments are going to be adjusted from April 1st as per normal, so you'll be getting slightly more anyway. The in-work tax credit is a payment to families with dependent children where at least one parent is in paid employment and neither parent receives a main benefit from Work and Income. The cutoff for receiving the tax credit is around $89,000 of annual family income for a family with one child, $112,000 for a family with two children, $135,000 for a family with three. The added payment will last for one year or until the price of 91 octane petrol drops below $3 a litre for four consecutive weeks. It'll be estimated to cost around $373 million for the year, and Willis has promised the cost will be met within the government's operating allowance. So there you have it; that's the detail. It's pretty much as we expected, isn't it? And it's not perfect. There'll be some who feel overlooked and left out, others who'll say, you're all going soft, suck it up, put your head down, get through it like we used to, stop spending money on coffees and Netflix and you'll be fine. And others like me who see it more as a morale booster than an income booster. An acknowledgement that there have been tough times for the past five years and that many young families who are in the lower income because of where they are at their stage in life have been literally paying the price for the failings of well-paid public servants who made decisions that impacted on them and had absolutely no impact on the decision makers. When the going got tough, they took the money and they ran – they're sitting pretty now, thanks very much. And in the meantime, the reverberations and the repercussions and the ramifications of the decisions they made are literally being paid for by young Kiwi families. As the Finance Minister told Mike Hosking this morning, although they don't know the vehicular or transport circumstances of each individual low-income family, they know they'll be feeling the pinch from increased fuel prices across the board. “You are right that those families' circumstances will vary, but regardless of their circumstances, they will be facing increasing costs and many of them will be car users and many of them will experience other price pressures. In terms of diesel users, yes, we are very conscious that diesel prices have gone up massively. They're a huge input for our agricultural, manufacturing, industrial industries. The challenge we have there, Mike, is our number one goal is to make sure those industries have enough diesel to keep going, because that's what would do the most harm to the economy in terms of jobs and incomes. And so it would be wrong for us to be sending a price signal down now by reducing the price of diesel when actually, in future, if worst case scenarios played out, we might be having to preserve our supply of diesel. So that's what we're very focused on.” Which is a fair point. Lowering the price of diesel, allowing for a spend up on the diesel, is probably not a sensible thing if we have to bring in rationing. So I'd really very much like to get your feedback on this. As far as I see it, it's a morale booster. It's like, hang in there. Things are getting better. Things were getting better, just, and then along comes the attack on Iran and the tightening up of the Straits of Hormuz and the tightening up of the fuel supply, which is absolutely essential not just to the Western world, but to the entire world at the moment. It'll be over quickly or it won't. Hopefully it will. It won't last forever. The Reserve Bank Governor said she sees it hopefully as temporary and that good times are a coming. We've been promised them for so long we probably, we're probably a bit cynical. But the good times are ...
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    6 mins
  • Kerre Woodham: In this instance, a bit of support is necessary

    Kerre Woodham: In this instance, a bit of support is necessary
    Mar 24 2026

    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.

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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    5 mins
  • Kerre Woodham: The Greens' fuel relief package should be seriously considered

    Kerre Woodham: The Greens' fuel relief package should be seriously considered
    Mar 22 2026
    In today's edition of Fuel Watch, the Green Party is offering its votes to the National Party to get on with passing what the Greens call a sensible and urgent fossil fuel crisis relief package. And you know what, it is quite sensible. They're not suggesting a horse and cart for every home - that's sensible. With the Greens and National's combined 63 votes, the Greens say you don't need any other political party to get this through. Their proposed package includes making public transport free for users, not forever, just while the Straits of Hormuz are compromised, a relief payment for low income people or people who live rurally to help meet additional transport costs, a windfall profits tax to prevent corporate price gouging, that's particularly Green, I think you'd be fair to say, reversing changes to school bus eligibility and routes, temporary expansion of eligibility for school buses, reversing the government's intended reduction in total mobility support for disabled people, and increasing the mileage rates to the 23,000 care and support workers to meet their actual travel costs, which we discussed the other day. Now, none of these are particularly silly, are they? Chlöe Swarbrick, the Green Party co leader, says New Zealanders expect politicians to do everything we can to support people through this immediate crisis and to minimise future vulnerability by reducing fossil fuel dependence. And she's not wrong. You know, normally we would probably be able to weather this particular storm. It won't last forever, there'll be a resolution one way or the other. And, normally families would be able to accommodate this, but it's been five years of scrimping and saving and compromising for many, many working families. You know, they've had to cope with inflation and increases in mortgage payments or rents, increased food costs, increased insurance, increased rates, things that you simply cannot compromise on. These are things you have to have, they're not nice-to-haves, they're must-haves, and it's been tough going. And for many families, this is like the straw that breaks the camel's back. It wouldn't be forever, the sort of relief they're talking about. It wouldn't be, I suppose they'd quite like to see, you know, public transport being free forever, but you know, I think that's not what they've said. They've said that there are people right now who are hurting, who cannot, cannot make any further compromises in their budgets, and they need assistance. I don't think there's a lot wrong with what they're suggesting. I know this coalition government, quite rightly, is wary of throwing money out to all and sundry, as we saw with the Covid spend up, but I'm absolutely certain they have the tools and the philosophy to target assistance where it should be targeted, as the Prime Minister bangs on, you know, timely, targeted, and temporary. So that's precisely what the Greens are suggesting. Nicola Willis, the Finance Minister, has ruled out across the board price cuts, fair enough, not everybody does need support. We grabbed the PM on his way out after chatting to Mike and said, well come on, what about the Greens? And he said, "yes, yes, yes, we're already working on some of these measures", but all very well and good. The people who need support needed it last week, not yes, yes, yes, we're working on it, you know, in the future. People need it now to get to work. And people are willing to use the buses. I don't know what's happening in your city, but in Auckland, it recorded its busiest day on public transport in seven years, and that was last Tuesday. 7,000 more trips than the previous busiest day, which was two weeks ago. So people are, are feeling it. And if they can make alternative transport arrangements, they will. And if they find, through trying out public transport, that it actually works for them, that's got to benefit everybody. The road users, public transport, people's pockets. Just because the Greens suggest something, I don't think it should be dismissed or snorted at or, you take every suggestion on its merits, and in this particular case, I think the Greens have got a point. I note that their targeted assistance didn't cover the food producers, and I think they could probably do with a break. I think John talked about that when he was doing the show. You know, and they may well be able to get through this without having to hoick the prices up too much. I suppose it's a bit much to expect the Greens to offer targeted assistance to food producers. They seem to think we should all be breatharians, but does this cover off the Green's suggestion, the public transport free for users for a certain amount of time, a relief payment for low income people or people who live rurally, increasing the mileage rates for the care and support workers? I don't see that as being particularly egregiously extravagant or silly or nonsensical. These are the people who need help, who need it now, and who need ...
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    7 mins
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