Full Show Podcast: 11 March 2025

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Digging through the spin spence to find the real story.
Or it's Ryan Bridge on Heather du for see Elan
drive with one New Zealand. Let's get connected and news talks.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
That'd be seven after four. Good afternoon to you. This
company that's fallen over behind the school lunches, there's a
long list of problems with it. Will tell you what
they are. Inspect to David Seymour after five this evening.
Is Wellington going to get another Crown Observer online gambling?
Where should the profits go? The government's looking at changes.
We'll talk about that after sex. Murray Olds has the

(00:35):
wildest story of the day out of Australia today. And
women are better than men with money, is anyone's surprise?
Rich A lot of chat this week about international investment.
The government's got its much hyped summit with the money
men and the money women flying in from all over
the world and New Zealand, I should add, and that
is all well and good, but you've got to ask

(00:56):
yourself whether we should or could be bankrolling more of
our own roads and pipes and schools, our infrastructure. To
do that, we of course would need more money, more savings,
a bigger portfolio. Last night on this program, Nicola Will
has confirmed that she's looking at changes to Kiwi Saver.
No doubt this has been a success for our country

(01:17):
sincekcking off in two thousand and seven, we've got about
one hundred more than one hundred billion dollars invested. Now
add to that the super fund about seventy billion, we're
almost at two hundred billion dollars, which is great. The
keiw Saver contribution though the minimum is still just three percent,
the Australians have close to four trillion dollars invested in

(01:41):
their superfunds. They've got the fourth largest savings pool in
the world, even though their population is fifty sixth largest.
They outdo themselves massively. Their contribution technically paid by the
employer is eleven and a half percent, compared that to
our three. Have you ever driven on an Australia in
motorway and wondered how do they pay for this? Some

(02:03):
of that comes from the huge retirement savings in ken
We say that you have a great system. It's got
lots of members. We've got more than three million of
us who are as signed up, but it's not growing
fast enough for us. It could be so much more
than it is. We of course came late to the
party compared to the Australians and there's nothing we can

(02:24):
do about that now, and their contribution rates have gone
up over a much longer period of time. However, making
change now is probably the smart thing to do. Doesn't
mean that it's going to be easy for any government
to do, right. That's the problem. Convincing people that they
need less of their hard earned money today for tomorrow
is not an easy sell, but long term it's the

(02:47):
right one. And the tolls that we pay on that
beautiful stretch of motorway that we're driving on up north
or down south one day might just be boomeranging back
to us, Ryan Bread nine minutes after four, do you
how many subscriptions do you have? I was counting up
mine today at least thirteen subscriptions for Netflix and iCloud

(03:11):
and all that sort of stuff. Consumers, that's us. We're
being warned of subscription traps as meal kit company hellow
Fresh is facing criminal charges. This is from the Commerce Commission.
They say that the Hello Fresh business misled its consumers
during cold calls. They offered a discount voucher without making

(03:33):
it clear that this reactivated and old subscription. Sahar A
loan is with Consumer ens EDG. She's with me this afternoon.
Hi Sahar, Hi Ryan, how are you very good? Thank you.
Let's talk just generally about the subscription issue. What is
a subscription trap? What does that mean?

Speaker 3 (03:51):
Well, let's start with what's not a subscription trap. So
people should be able to understand what they're signing up
for and be able to care subscriptions and services really easily.
So when that doesn't happen, you know, if a company
makes you jump through hopes essentially just to opt out,
that's when it becomes a trap.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Is it something that's easy to get into hard to
get out of?

Speaker 3 (04:15):
Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think, you know, businesses
are incentivized to make it hard to quit because they
want you to stay with them, they want, you know,
customer attention. So I think that's where things are starting
to get a bit trickier.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
What does the law actually say about you know, what
rules do you have to follow to cancel subscriptions?

Speaker 3 (04:35):
So there is a little bit of a gap there.
So there is the Consumer Guarantees Act, which requires traders
to exercise reasonable care and skill and then there's also
the Fair Trading Act, which prohibits misleading and deceptive conduct
and unfair contract terms. But neither of those addresses some
of the you know, those really questionable subscription cancelation practices.

(04:58):
And in the US we've seen a click to cancel bill,
So some of those rules would actually make it a
bit simpler for people to get out of a contract
the same way they got in.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
What does that mean? You just one click and it's.

Speaker 3 (05:12):
Over, Yeah, one or two or you know, rather than
having to make a phone call or you know, some
gyms will make you actually go into cancel rather than
doing it online.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
So you can sign up online, but you have to
go in personally to get out of it.

Speaker 3 (05:30):
Yeah. In some cases with apps, for instance, you might
be looking for the actual mechanism or the button or
where that lives, and so it's increasingly harder for people
to understand how to actually get out of that.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
So if people and it seems an odd thing to say,
I mean, money's tight at the moment, so you would
presumably know if you had subscriptions you didn't need that
you were paying for. But if people discover that they
are paying for stuff that they don't actually need or
don't want anymore. What advice do you have for them?
What should they do?

Speaker 3 (06:00):
A couple of things you can do. You know, having
a lock through your bank account is a good way
to start, so you might want to sit down once
a year and look at what's going out of it
in case there's something you haven't realized you'd like to
get out of. There's also just reading the t's and
c's before signing up to make sure there's no hidden
costs or cancelation fees. You can diorize renewal dates. Say

(06:23):
you're signing up for a free trial and you just
want to make sure that that doesn't keep rolling on
after you intend it to last, or if you don't
actually appreciate the service. You can also document any attempts
to cancel that service and use that for chargeback request
for your bank if you have no luck with the
service itself and you decide you need to escalate it.

(06:46):
There's also going to the Commerce Commission to complain if
you think that that difficulty of experience could be the
result of a breach. Okay, it sounds leap, so it
sounds like a lot.

Speaker 2 (06:58):
I just want to breach one button that says bugger off.

Speaker 3 (07:01):
You know, that's the point. It shouldn't really bear pain.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
It shouldn't. It shouldn't sah, thank you for that, sahar Loan,
who's with Consumer n Z. It is fourteen minutes after.

Speaker 4 (07:11):
Four Ryan Bridge.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
Lots of people texting and already yes, I had that
with Hello Fresh. Took me four weeks to get my
money back. City Fitness is a sign up trap, so
hard to stop the direct debits once you've gone into it.
And I guess the other thing you should do is
and no one does it, but read the t's and c's,
because that will tell you how easy or difficult it's
going to be to get out of the thing once
you're in it. Nineteen nineteen, the numbers text now LaBelle Group.

(07:35):
This is the company that's gone into liquidation today. It's
in charge of one hundred and twenty five thousand school
lunches per day, So this is more headaches for David
Seymour and for the government. Compass is sort of in
cohoots with this group. This group's fallen over. Compus is
going to take over there part of the business, so
there shouldn't be any disruption, any further disruption to the

(07:55):
school lunches, but man, what an increasingly messy mess to
clean up. David Seama was on the show after five
to try and do that. But if you look back
at this company, business Desk has done a lot of
work on exactly how bad they have been for quite
a while. So you've got to ask, why would you
pick this company when it's got a litany of mistakes

(08:19):
that have been well documented. The ministry contracted them to
do this cheap cost cutting service with the the right
people for it. David Sima on the show after five,
Darcy Next.

Speaker 1 (08:31):
It's the Heather Dupers Allen Drive Full Show podcast on
iHeartRadio powered my News TALKSB.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
News Talks B. It's eighteen minutes after four, Ryan, how
does a company fail with one hundred and twenty five
thousand meals a day with a government contract that's guaranteed
for payment. It's very good question, was and it's only
been six weeks that they are into term one, roughly
six weeks, So how on earth do you did you
go tips up after six weeks with guaranteed payment? You

(08:59):
know how much you'll how many meals you've got to
make per day? You've got the contract in place. What's
the problem, David Seymour after five Darcis here was sport
Hey Darcy out what now? I know a good point.
Now the black Caps, the squad to face Pakistan in
this five match to twenty series, is missing a few
big names.

Speaker 5 (09:18):
Well, it's missing a few big names because a few
big names tearing off to make a bit of money
over the IPL. So they're not available. But that's okay
because that's the nature of our New Zealand cricket contracts.
It has been for the last few years. So no
Devin Conway, no Lookie Ferguson, no Glenn Phillips and no
ravishing Rick. Ravendra Mitch Santan is not there either. But

(09:41):
this is all preordained. They know this is the case.
I think there have been pragmatics the word I like
to use around New Zealand cricket. They know that the
money to be made by these athletes is with the
IPL and other big leagues, so they're willing to go
you know what, you go off and then making money.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
That's fine.

Speaker 5 (09:58):
We'll look at the next tier like it's a bad
team because it isn't a couple of younger guys who
have already got a foothold in the black Caps set
up have been given further opportunity to present their claims,
and a couple of the older guys have climbed back
in as well. There's a T twenty I World Cup
coming up next year in February March, so there's a
lot to play for and this is part of their process,

(10:21):
in his process to look forward to what that side
or what that squad looks like. No Cain Williamson either.
Caine's chosen to not make himself available. What happens with
him in the future, whether he keeps playing, whether he retires,
What are the parameters around his selection come next year?

(10:41):
We'll find out more. Sam Wills, he actually joins us
on the program conveniently the selector up after seven a
hals I.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
Saw that Sir Jim Ratcliffe had a bit of a
spray in the media saying, oh, well, this is why
we're not giving ins It out the money that we
owe them, you know, which they do owe them. They
signed a contract for it, but they're a bit broke
at the moment.

Speaker 5 (10:59):
So twenty two billion dollars in the hole, a bit broken.
I don't think anybody on the planet, with the accept
of the of the other billionaires, give two hoots about
the problems he finds himself in.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
Do you no, But I guess he's just explaining himself.
He's sign a contract.

Speaker 5 (11:16):
If he's in a whole twenty two billion dollars, we
did do billion and they're building some petro chemical planted
over an island? Is it for ten billion dollars? Don't
go signing contracts that eight million bucks.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
He's dealing a rough idea. He's dealing with the industrialization
of Europe.

Speaker 5 (11:32):
Remember, he's giving us all these excuses as to why
he ran away from his commitments, but he's a running
away for all of other sport in clements as well.
I feel for Manchester United, I feel for the cycle teams. Well,
America's Cup. He's had enough of that already as well.

Speaker 2 (11:46):
So that's fine.

Speaker 5 (11:47):
Tell us what you want, but give us our money
to Jim.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
We'll see you in court, Darcy, thank you. He's not
on the show Sports seven o'clock tonight. On his talk
twenty one minutes after four lots of insting texts on
Hello Fresh Someone, Scotty says I had to cancel my
credit card to escape Hello Fresh. They are so hard
to unsubscribe from. They sent us three boxes after the
card canceled when they realized and never heard back from

(12:11):
them again. It's terrible. Scotty twenty one. After four news talks, heb.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
Informed inside into today's issues. It's Ryan Bridge on Hither
duplicy Ellen drive with one New Zealand let's get connected
News talks.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
'b four twenty four. Great to have your company and
lots of you getting fired off about school lunches. And
I promised we wouldn't keep talking about school lunches. I
thought we'd actually put that behind us last week. But
then this company goes belly up today. So here we are.
Ryan is a commercial caretaker. It's not rocket science. Three
dollars to cook, package and distribute a meal was never
going to work this gram do you think? Says another

(12:50):
that the cost of replacing planned meals with pit a
pit pies and associated waste of those meals has tipped
Labelle's cash flow up. That is a point. Actually, I
read today that forty percent of meals provided in the
first week of March, forty percent of them had to
come in from outside. In other words, they weren't making them,

(13:11):
they were buying them in because of issues, and presumably
that's to do with the bells, So that would be
a very hefty bill. Indeed, I would imagine twenty five
minutes after four David Seymour on the show after five Bridge.
Now Chris seed is going to be the new boss,
the new chief at Enzeit House in London. GoF is
off Chris seders In. He's the former Secretary Too of

(13:33):
Foreign Affairs and Trade, basically the boss of m FAT.
He finished last year. He's now basically sort of semi retired,
retiring m FAT boss official who's going to go and
save the day over in London. He'll be the acting
High Commissioner. Gof's flying home this weekend. Pretty brutal. A
you've lived there for a couple of years, you've been
high flying. It's a pretty plumb gig and then bam

(13:55):
you come home. But it was a necessary brutal move
from Winston. And he's off to see Marco Rubio this
weekend or early next week. You can't have a guy
one of your officials mouthing off in London while you're
doing all of that. And also if you think Donald
Trump is not watching and not listening this part of
the world, think again. Did you see his late night

(14:18):
spray on social media. He had a rant about Malcolm
Turnble because Malcolm Turnbull's been putting the knife into the
Oval office to Trump. Trump's been watching and then goes
on this truth social and has a little spray back.
So it's not like he's not looking, it's not like
he's not sensitive, and it's not like we want to
be on the wrong side of it. Nineteen the number's

(14:39):
text twenty six minutes after four here on news Talks.
There'd be also Wellington. I want to get to Wellington
after five thirty. We're going to talk to Nick Leggett.
There is serious talk now of another Crown observer, not
for the council but for Wellington Water. I mean, how
many pairs of training wheels does one city need? Seriously,

(15:01):
News Talks.

Speaker 5 (15:02):
It be.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
On the iHeart app and in your car on your
drive home it's Ryan Bridge on hither duplessy Ellen drive
with one New Zealand let's get connected.

Speaker 4 (15:45):
News talks it b I'm a.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
Double shot of whiskey.

Speaker 6 (15:49):
They downstown Ye Street.

Speaker 2 (15:52):
There's a party downtown near Fire Street. Everybody at the barge.

Speaker 7 (15:56):
In to shut out soon.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
It is twenty five away from five years. Said, we'll
look at the issue where Benton or coming into New Zealand,
what the government's trying to do about that after five
o'clock as well, Swearing apparently makes things less painful. I
don't know about this research, but we'll run you through
that shortly. It's twenty five to five.

Speaker 4 (16:14):
It's the world wires on news talks. They'd be drive.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
The Americans are sticking to their guns. Both Russia and
Ukraine must make concessions to end this war. New Talk's happening,
of course tonight in Saudi Arabia. This Ukrainian soldier says
he'll fight on with or without America's help. Obviously, I'm upset,
of course. We were counting on more support, but if
they don't help, we'll fight with what we've got.

Speaker 4 (16:37):
Listens to you.

Speaker 2 (16:38):
In Australia, Turnbull is locking horns with Donald Trump. This
is the former Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull. He says
everyone's basically a bit too soft with Trump. Trump has
in turn called him a week leader. Malcolm Turnbull has
been asked whether this will make it more difficult for
Australia to get an exemption to the tariffs.

Speaker 8 (16:57):
Are you suggesting that we should engage in censorship in
Australia for fear of offending the huge ego of Donald Trump?
Is that really the state that we've got to. Surely
we should be Surely we should be free to speak
the truth.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
There are so many things wrong with what he's saying
and doing that annoy me. We'll talk about that shortly.
Mariold will be with us in a second. Two. Finally,
this afternoon, turns out an ancient species of giant shark
was probably even bigger than we thought it was. Previously,
we thought that megalodons were about eighteen to twenty meters long,

(17:37):
but according to a new study, they could actually have
been twenty four meters long. Does that make them? I
mean that was scary to begin with. I don't know
how much more scared you can be. Thankfully, megalodons so
what we're calling them. Megalodons went extinct millions of years ago.
So we don't have to worry.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
About this international correspondence with ends in eye insurance, Peace
of mind, New Zealand business.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
Probably so did Malcolm Turnbull whend extinct. A long time ago,
I would have thought Murray Olds is with us, our
Australia correspondent, Murray good afternoon.

Speaker 9 (18:09):
Hi Brian. How are you going.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
What's the public making of this tiff with the between
Turnbull and Trump?

Speaker 9 (18:16):
Well, when he was Prime minister, and long before he
was Prime minister, the worldview of Malcolm Turbule was that
he thought himself to be the most clever man in
the room. You know, he's a self made multi multi
millionaire one time the Prime Minister, very very bright, and
you know he's entitled, I guess, to a fairly elevated

(18:38):
opinion of himself because don't forget he was the prime
minister who stood up Trump back in twenty sixteen over
a deal that Australia had signed with then President Barack Obama. Now,
for the life of me, the timing of this is intriguing.
We've got Trump about to whack tariffs on allies. It
doesn't matter anybody who he doesn't like, bang on go

(19:01):
tariff's notwithstanding in fact, Australia has got a trade surplus
with the United States and we're in the whole for
nearly four hundred billion dollars to buy submarines. We may
never see. Donald Trump doesn't even know what Orcas is.
So it's just intriguing. What's Malcolm Turbull doing? Is he
getting it? Is it a gets square with Trump? Is
he trying to puff his own ego up? Is he

(19:22):
trying in some way to intervene in the upcoming election
because Anthony Albanezian Company, quietly behind the scenes, have been
lobbying like crazy to try and get Australia a carve
out from these tariffs for our steels certainly and also
hopefully the aluminium industry because they're worth billions of dollars
and exports to Australia. So what's Turbul doing? Just is

(19:45):
he got poking the bear sitting in the Oval office.
It really is intriguing. I don't know what on earth
he is playing at. I can tell you one thing.
The government will be going, oh thanks Malcolm for nothing.
And Peter Dutton, the Opposition leader now because he wants
to be Liberal Prime Minister, just as Malcolm Turbull was.
Turnbull's a bigger pardon. Dunton is saying, well, the Prime

(20:09):
minister has responsibility, as Malcolm Turbull did when he was
PM to negotiate with a vent Trump administration for an
exemption on tariffs. Well, talk about throwing poor ole elbow
under the bus. So look there's lots of moving parts.
I'm not sure where there's going to land. But she
was very interesting and great to he at. Turnbull just
slashing and burning like he's always done.

Speaker 2 (20:28):
I guess it is. But as you say, the timing
is not great for you guys. Use you're almost playing
with people's livelihoods. You know, it's very very much so,
very much so.

Speaker 9 (20:39):
These are important export industries, vitally important for Australia with
our biggest trading partner. I mean, come on, it couldn't
get much the States couldn't get much higher. And here's
Malcolm Turbull saying the Trump me across the Pacific Ocean.
It's crazy.

Speaker 2 (20:56):
Hey, where are we at with cyclone Alfred.

Speaker 9 (21:00):
Ex tropical syde coone Alfred has withered and died just
about Blue Skies in northern New South Wales and south
southeast Queensland today. But look, there's still a heck of
a long way to go. As you might expect Ryan.
The scale of destruction is enormous. You've had flooding, not
as bad as twenty twenty two, but you've had a

(21:20):
lot of destruction, a lot of power lines down. They're
getting homes back as quick as they can. Apparently about
seven thousand left in northern New South Wales and people
are being allowed home because the State Emergency Services has
lifted all the evacuation orders. But some people importedly are
going back and they're getting onto doctor Google and trying
to work out how to restore the power themselves. Not

(21:42):
a good idea, according to the experts in the field.
That's an't cut it out. You've also got cash payments
flowing from tomorrow to eligible people. You've got also damage
assessment teams with the insurance industry on notice over here
from the state and federal governments left your game. Because

(22:02):
so many people in twenty twenty two were dutted by
their insurance companies. The governments are saying, you've got to
do better. If people take out insurance, they do so
for a reason, and that's to be covered in the
event of an emergency like this.

Speaker 2 (22:15):
Yeah, fair enough too. Now it looks like this caravan
Tira plot. This is fascinating was actually an elaborate hoax.

Speaker 9 (22:22):
This is crazy, isn't it. I mean this I was
thinking before I came on air with you, how best
to describe this? I mean, it could be it could
be a movie script or like a TV series. You've
got fourteen people in custody now charged with a total
of sixty five offenses relating to anti Semitic attacks in
Sydney the Eastern suburbs, mainly between October and February. Right,

(22:47):
so fourteen people, sixty five chargers. Two of the accused,
two men aged thirty one and thirty four, are the
alleged ring leaders of this. And I'm not sure if
in New Zealand you've got a thing called air ask.
You can put stuff on social media. I want my
lawn mode or my hedge trimmed, and you know, you
negotiate a price and someone will answer the air task

(23:08):
a request and come around and do the job. Apparently
that's what these alleged crims did, these two ring leaders,
they put it out on social media. Anyone want to
do some jobs for money, criminal activity doesn't matter. And
you've got these other muppets turning up and willing to
go and fire bomb synagogues on the orders of these halfwards.
So here's the thing.

Speaker 3 (23:27):
You've got.

Speaker 9 (23:30):
One of the alleged ring leaders is a member of
a biking gang of he's not still he used to
be one of the heavies in the Nomad's Biki gang.
He is accused of a bunch of different things, but
master minding these anti Semitic taxes the key allegation against him.

(23:50):
He's denied it. He hasn't applied for bail. You've also
got four of the accused. Interestingly, they were taken from
jails in Sydney to local police stations and charge yesterday afternoon.
It just gets I mean, honestly, you scratch your heads.
And then what I've seen this on Telly Ryan. I
haven't seen it in real life until now.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
Is this why? Because I remember when this first came
out there was some criticism of Albanesi and the government
for not releasing the details earlier. If there was a
tiar three, does that mean the cops knew all along?
That wasn't It wasn't real.

Speaker 9 (24:24):
The police knew from very early on that caravan was
a duck. I mean, here's the thing. Apparently. The allegation
is a couple of Monthets went on social media and
bought a three dollar caravan. You know just what a
k they then went and got. The allegation is explosives
from the mining industry so old they could vote. Not

(24:44):
only were they old and not designed to go off anymore,
they didn't have a detonator and they had written a crayon,
from the sound of it, a list of Jewish targets
in Sydney or synagogue at you know, two Smith Street,
Go and form that. I mean, this is the sort
of level of intellectual replied to this alleged plot. These
people are profoundly stupid.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
Murray, thank you for that. Murray Old's Australia correspondent not one.
To Vince's words, it is sixteen minutes away from five
News Talk, said be Barry soaper. Next. A lot of
lux has been filling the heat in the house this
afternoon over the school lunches thing. How did he do?
We'll find out.

Speaker 1 (25:19):
Politics with Centric C to check your customers and get
payment certainty.

Speaker 2 (25:23):
Ryan Turnbull is not poking the beer in the Oval office.
It's not a beer in there. It's a squealing pig
says it says Matt, I think we'll come back to
this in a second, because there's a lot of debate
about whether what Turnbull is doing is the right approach
or not. Thirteen minutes away from five now, Barry Soap
is his senior political correspondent, Barry Good Afternoon afternoon. Right
now in the house, these school lunch singers back with

(25:43):
a vengeance.

Speaker 5 (25:44):
Isn't it terrible?

Speaker 6 (25:45):
It just goes on and on and on. I mean
a Green MP by the name of Lawrence sou Nan.
He even wrote to the Speaker to day and the
House proceedings started off with the Speakers saying, I have
received a letter from this doctor Lawrence Sunan, who apparently
has a list MP for the Greens, seeking a snap

(26:07):
debate on the so called exploding school lunch. I think
Jerry was in his right mind and said, no, there
won't be a snap debate on it. When a lunch
falls over, it's not a case for Parliament to charge
itself with that. In New Zealand, I just had a
look at how many lunches we supply. We supply two

(26:28):
hundred and thirty thousand lunches a day. That company that
went broke. They were more than one hundred thousand of those,
so that's quite significant. And I was looking around the
world and having a look at where school lunch is
being provided. Most countries are supplying them to needy schools
and needy areas. If you think of India for example,

(26:50):
and the primerster could take a few tips from India
on school lunches when he goes there next week. They
supply one hundred and twenty five million school lunches. Imagine that.
But anyway, look Labour's Chris Hipkins. He was banging on
about how bad the school lunches are in Parliament today.
But I believe he scored something of an own goal.

(27:13):
How many times have we heard about that exploding lunch
in Gisbon. I mean what happened was the kid carrying
the lunch actually dropped it and splashed a bit of
the whatever the lunch was on his leg and got burnt. Well,
it's hardly an exploding lunch. The media have called it.
Many sections of the media have called it the exploding lunch,

(27:36):
and Hipkins himself today called it that and the one lunch,
the more than one lunch has exploded. If you listen
to Chris Hipkins.

Speaker 10 (27:44):
Listen, why is he willing to wait until term two
for the chaos David Seymour's cause to the school lunch
program to be fixed? Given kids are going hungry, lunches
are still arriving late or not at all, some of
the food is inedible, and in the worst cases, kids
are being physically injured by exploding lunches.

Speaker 11 (28:02):
Well, the incident we saw last week was unacceptable and
not something we want to see at all. I think
the Minister has fronted really clearly on that actually suspending
those type of lunches through Can.

Speaker 12 (28:14):
The Prime Minister confirm that yesterday's on time delivery for
the Healthy School Lunch program was ninety nine point seven
four percent? And is that better than the delivery of
the vaccine roll out which someone forgot to order?

Speaker 6 (28:33):
Ouch And don't forget that Chris Hopkins was the COVID
minister he was at the time, so that was a
bit of a good comeback.

Speaker 4 (28:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:41):
I guess there's the politics of it, and then there's
why did we give these guys the contract if they
were six weeks from going bally up so they knew
that's right, So strange David Seymour on the show After
five on that now this investment summit kicking off this
week in Auckland and the Greens are waiting.

Speaker 6 (28:56):
In well, they were in Parliament today and if polls
anything to go by, of course the Labor led government
will have the Greens at the cabinet table. Have a
listen to their co leader Mardam M Davidson quizzing the
Prime Minister in Parliament about the summit and how comfortable
are you with the sort of her sort of economic thinking.

Speaker 13 (29:17):
What exactly is his growth strategy to utilize and develop
our local wealth based here in Altaioa.

Speaker 11 (29:24):
New Zealand has done a very very poor job over
a number of decades of attracting capital to New Zealand.

Speaker 13 (29:30):
Is it fair that the biggest early childhood education provider
that New Zealanders have to send their talmadiki to so
they can go to mahe pulled in thirty two million
dollars of tax free profits last year while most people
are struggling to get by.

Speaker 11 (29:46):
I mean this is just characterized as the Greens position,
doesn't it It's a de growth agenda of living in
a hermit kingdom.

Speaker 13 (29:54):
Will the Prime minister increase public ownership of the basic
things we all need just to live, like school lunches,
healthcare and childcare, or will he choose to sell off all.

Speaker 11 (30:06):
I have to say the Greens are totally deluded on economics.

Speaker 2 (30:11):
I mean, I don't know how to say it any
other way.

Speaker 6 (30:15):
That was Shane Jones yelling out marxis Marxist in the background.
But look, it is interesting, isn't And I heard your
editorial and you know it's been traditionally so hard to
raise capital in this country because we simply don't have enough.
I mean, these people are trillionaires coming to the country.
Six trillion dollars has represented at this investment summit, a

(30:39):
lot of money, and I've heard from some very senior
people involved in the investment community saying the problem with
New Zealand up until now is they haven't had projects
to offer. Now, hopefully over the next few days Thursday
and Friday, we'll see a number of projects on the
table so that these people can look at them and say, yeah,

(31:01):
that could be a good.

Speaker 2 (31:03):
And hopefully having Barbara Edmonds at the giving a speech
there and showing her support make of them an indication
that yeah, it's good. It's good because you need consistency. Barry,
thank you very much, no problem to see. It's always
Barry Soper, Senior political correspondent here at News Talks. He'd
be just gone seven minutes away from five. Don't forget
David Seymour on the lunches after five o'clock. We'll look
at the fentanyl issue as well, and why apparently why

(31:26):
are women better with money than men?

Speaker 4 (31:29):
Digging into the issues that affect you on my casking
breakfast now, the.

Speaker 14 (31:34):
Poll I need to tell you this morning is full
of holes. And I wouldn't put any more weight on
it my impatience or something.

Speaker 9 (31:39):
I just wanted to.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
No disrespect.

Speaker 11 (31:43):
But we hear the hell of a mess, and you
know we're working hard every single day to make sure
that we're cleaning up the mess.

Speaker 14 (31:50):
Sponterira going down that track. It's not like that I
don't already do it. They just say we want to
concentrate on Bolk goods and.

Speaker 2 (31:56):
I cannot for the work and will work out while
you think Bulk is better than that.

Speaker 14 (32:00):
At back tomorrow at six am, the Mike Hosking Breakfast
with the Rain Driver of the Laugh News Talk z
B four to.

Speaker 2 (32:06):
Five on News Talk ZB. So you've got a whole
range of former prime ministers and politicians coming out, and
we've had so much feedback on this this afternoon. I
just want to quickly say, you know, you've had now Goff,
You've had Helen Clark over An Australia, Malcolm Turnbull. They're
all coming out and bashing Donald Trump. But it's easy
to lob grenades when you've left the building, you know,

(32:27):
when you're not in the hot seat anymore, when you're
not in the business of politics where you're trying to
curry favor with a powerful president who can slap you
with massive tariffs and potentially cripple parts of your economy.
I mean, what is the alternative? Are we going to
turn our backs on America for the next four years?
What are people actually suggesting here? You basically just have

(32:51):
to nod, smile and write it out, don't you. News
Talk Saib David Seymour after News.

Speaker 1 (33:01):
Yeah, questions, answers, facts, analysis, the drive show you trust

(33:23):
for the full picture. Brian Bridge on hither Duplicy Ellen
Drive with One New Zealand Let's get connected news talks.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
That'd be good men at a seven half for five.
We smelled a rat with claims of homelessness last night.
We'll update you on that in just a second. Right now,
one of the government's school lunch providers has gone into liquidation.
LaBelle Group made one hundred and twenty five thousand of
their meals each day. Liquidatas are now working with Compass Group,
that's the main group involved, to make sure that the
staff still get paid, the kitchens are open and the

(33:52):
kids get fed. The Athleader David Seymour is in charge.
Home Minister.

Speaker 15 (33:58):
Hey, Ryan, thanks for having me on.

Speaker 2 (34:01):
Does this mean that kids are going to go without lunch?

Speaker 15 (34:05):
No, We've been dealing with some difficult circumstances, but our
number one priority has been what they call business continuity,
making sure that the deliveries continue to happen.

Speaker 2 (34:16):
On time and form and is it going to cost
us anything extra?

Speaker 15 (34:22):
Know that the contracts is between the Ministry of Education
and Compass. That contract remains. Any issues that may be
reported in the media are between Compass and other businesses.
And really I don't want to sound like I'm avoiding
the issue, but it is actually something that needs to
be left to them.

Speaker 2 (34:41):
Is this a sign that's not actually economic economically viable
to do the lunches as cheaply as you want.

Speaker 15 (34:47):
Now, I'm very confident that it will continue and people
will see that it can be a success. It has
been a success. In many cases. People forget the good
news and that the good meals and the people that
are very appreciative of this program, and that's all been
done at a price. There's been some issues around supply.
I don't really want to go into it because there's
still commercial stuff going on and I don't want to

(35:08):
take sides in that. But nonetheless, you know, we're solving
problems and it's going to get even better.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
Is it fair to say that this was the rotten apple,
that these guys were actually responsible for the bulk of
all the stuff that's been going wrong.

Speaker 15 (35:22):
Look, I don't want to say that, because, like I say,
there's contracts between different businesses they have to work out
amongst themselves. Me jumping in and publicly taking sides as
the last thing that's needed right now.

Speaker 2 (35:33):
Are you confident how the Ministry has handled this with
their due diligence. I mean, there were issues raised with
Libel for going back to last year, some pretty serious ones,
about delivery, about the quality, I mean, all the stuff
we've been talking about this year. Did they do enough
checks and balances?

Speaker 15 (35:49):
Yeah, look, I think that they did. I think, you know,
in the fullness of time, all the details will come
out and people will judge that I and frankly the
Ministry of Education have actually acted well through this process.
What I would say is that, yes, there are criticisms
of label, there are criticisms of compass. But actually, if
you go through the whole four years of the school

(36:10):
lunch program under labor there were lots of criticisms, including
seven different food safety investigations, none of which were into
label or compass.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
The problem you've got, though, is that Labour had one
hundred and fifty six supplies. Up until last year, there
one hundred and fifty six suppliers. Your cust cut cost
model only retained two of them, and now one of
them has fallen over. Doesn't look great.

Speaker 16 (36:33):
Well, that's not true.

Speaker 15 (36:34):
Actually, the School Lunch Collective has over twenty Zealand suppliers
that they've pulled together, many of which supply through Gilmore's.
If you saw the launch that we did here at
the Beehive near the middle end of last year, you know,
we had the names and representatives of all those different companies.
So the school Lunch Collective has always been a real

(36:55):
showcase of New Zealand food business rather than just two suppliers,
very multiple.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
But what I'm saying is of the supply's existing supplies,
one hundred and fifty six the only two to be
retained with these two. That's correct, is it not?

Speaker 15 (37:10):
Well, that's that is just right.

Speaker 4 (37:11):
And now.

Speaker 15 (37:14):
There's but no, because you know, well what you're saying
is true as far as it goes. If you want
to win that argument, congratulations, But I just make the
point that doesn't.

Speaker 2 (37:23):
Say so, yeah, I know, but doesn't that say something
about the people who were doing the checks and balances
to make sure this thing was actually going to fly.

Speaker 15 (37:32):
Well, not necessarily. But again I don't want to go
into pointing the finger at anyone just to say that.
I think in the fullness of time, all the details
will come out. We practice open government and I think
people will judge that we've actually acted well here all right.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
Well, we'll have to wait and see. David Semill, thank
you very much for your time. That's the act party leader.
He's the one that's been lumped with the well, it's
the thankless task of trying to feed our kids. Eleven
after five, Sentinal is set to join the likes of meth,
cocaine and hererwin becoming a Class A drug in New Zealand.
Ventanal not big issue here yet, but in the US

(38:06):
it is. Other countries are starting to struggle with it.
Massive university drug researcher Chris Wilkins is with me Hi,
Chris good innen. It's not a big problem here yet,
but do you think it will be?

Speaker 17 (38:19):
Well, this is the thing. I think this is a
really important and good preemptive move to reclassify fentanyl analogs
as class A just because I mean, we don't have
to look very far to see some really terrible levels
of opioid overdose largely related to fentanyl. Fentanyl put into

(38:41):
other opioids. So in the US there's been of one
hundred thousand jrug overdose gests per year since twenty twenty one,
So that's a real catastrophe, and the same thing as
in Canada and now I think it's just sensible to
start preparing and expect the worst. Preparing for the.

Speaker 2 (39:01):
Worst, is it People buying it and having it knowing
what they're taking, or is it just being slipped into
something else.

Speaker 17 (39:09):
Yeah, well this is the real insidious thing about fentanyl.
So initially fentanyl was substituted for heroin because it was
an opioid, but increasingly fentanyl is now being used a
do to adulterate a whole lot of drugs like methamphetamine
and cocaine as well. So they called us the fourth
wave of the opioid epidemic in the US. And really

(39:32):
this has been driven largely by drug producers and traffickers
because tunnel is so much more cheaper to produce, So
you can produce twenty times more fentanyl from kilogram of
ventanyl than heroin, so it's incredibly cheaper. So basically the
drug traffickers are being driven here by profit, and they've

(39:55):
been replacing heroin a fentanyl, but now increasingly a whole
lot of other drugs. And given that economic incentive, it's
hard to see that New Zealand is going to avoid
this problem.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
Yeah. Well, the idea of making this a class at
a drug and I'm not saying that you know, our
police are doing anything wrong necessarily, but I mean, if
you look at cocaine, if you look at Matthews, We've
never had more of it, and it's never been cheaper,
and they are all class as. So what hope do
we have of actually stopping it?

Speaker 17 (40:25):
Yeah, that's a really good point, so that this is
not the end of the story and it shouldn't be
the only response we do. And of course it's an
imperfect response. But if we're going to have a modor
where we have different classifications of drugs, that seems to me,
Fenton Or is the post a child for the top
of the pyramid in terms of penalties. But yes, we've

(40:45):
got to do a lot more different things, so joining
out our system in terms of drug detection, drug checking,
more border control, even being in things like fentanyl testing
patches where you can test the drugs. You think it's
methm fetterman, you think it's ecstasy, but you can detect
whether it's vent or in there. But there's all types

(41:07):
of overdose prevention and measures we could use as well.

Speaker 2 (41:09):
All right, Chris, thank you very much for that. Chris Wilkins,
Massi University drug researcher with us. It's just gone fourteen
after five here on News Talks he'd be lots of
texts coming in on the school lunches as you can imagine,
Liz says Ryan, I'd like to know how many of
the kids receiving those free lunches actually need one. I
couldn't agree with you more. I think there are clearly
lots of kids who are getting a free lunch right
now that don't need one, whose parents could be making

(41:32):
them for them. However, separate to that, you've got a
company who's only been in the job six weeks of
term one already going bally up. How does that happen?
And they've got a contract with a guaranteed payment from
the government for one hundred and twenty five thousand meals
a day, So how does that work? Nine two is
number to text. Next, we're going to look at the

(41:54):
fact that apparently women are better with money than men.
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(42:58):
and bridge. It has just gone nineteen after five views talks.
But I promise we'd update you on the homeless numbers
that we brought you last night. Much Ado made about
them in Parliament today as well. We'll get to that
in a second. Right now, it is official? Can we
women are better with money than men? The Financial Services
Council asked questions on financial literacy and found sixty six
percent of women answered the questions correctly, blokes fifty seven percent.

(43:22):
Despite this, they found that women are less confident in
their financial decision making. Shelley Pelman is the financial advisor
and enable me. She's with me.

Speaker 18 (43:30):
Hi, Shelley, Hi, Ryan, thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (43:33):
Good to have you here. So basically, would that not
mean that women would be better off financially than men?

Speaker 18 (43:40):
You would think so that literacy doesn't necessarily translate into confidence.

Speaker 19 (43:47):
So what action?

Speaker 2 (43:48):
So what's the confidence issue?

Speaker 6 (43:51):
Yeah?

Speaker 18 (43:51):
I think the confidence issue I think speaks to a
women's innate need for security, and I think this actually
stems from fear. And what it does is it leads
to less risk taking. And we see that across the board,
not just in terms of the financial kind of set there.
We see that in terms of the workforce and other

(44:11):
risks that they might take, and not taking a risk
can lead to obviously not getting that reward from taking
that risk. So self doubt, you know, no self doubt.

Speaker 2 (44:23):
It's interesting because I was thinking about this today. You know,
men take risks for good and bad, Right, we take
risk financially, but then we take dumb risks on the
roads and we end up wrapping ourselves around a lamp post.
You know, it's almost built into us that risk taking behavior,
isn't it.

Speaker 20 (44:39):
It is?

Speaker 18 (44:39):
And women just don't send to back themselves as much
as men, you know, And I think with this literacy piece,
they're feeling that need to arm themselves with information upstill
themselves in that financial space because you know, they want
to know how they can play the financial game here
in New Zealand. But hey, there's still that missing link
of actually taking action and that confidence.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
I wonder if you if you subtract a little bit
of knowledge and add a little bit of you know,
does does one sort of compromise the other? If men
were smarter with you know, with their financial literacy, would
they be as aggressive and outgoing and confident?

Speaker 18 (45:17):
Do you know that sometimes people arm themselves with too
much information And we see this here and and they
will be you know, we see that analysis paralysis thing
sometimes coming in. You know, they arm themselves with all
this information, but they're so overwhelmed by said information that
they don't actually.

Speaker 21 (45:31):
Do any face.

Speaker 2 (45:32):
Yeah, yeah, good point, Shelley. Thank you for that interesting discussion. Shelley,
Pullman the financial advisor to enable me. Time is twenty
one minutes after five here on News TALKSB. Who's better
with the money at your house? Nine to who do
you trust to do the investing? I guess is the
question nine two nine two is the number to text
because if you think about it, men likes, it's built
into us. Isn't it to be risk takers? When we

(45:54):
were hunter gathering, We're out there, you know, with our spares,
jumping on the back of buffalo. You can't sit back
and make calculations and you know, not go out there
and get it. That's really what it boils down to.
Twenty two minutes after five, News Talks.

Speaker 4 (46:09):
AB getting the facts discarding the fluff.

Speaker 1 (46:13):
It's Ryan Bridge on hither duplicy Ellen Drive with one
New Zealand let's get connected.

Speaker 2 (46:20):
News TALKSB five twenty five This business with homelessness. Last
night we brought you the story from Auckland Council and
I smelled a bit of a rat with this just
because of the way that the press release was framed.
What Auckland Council was saying about this, It's come from
the Council's Community Committee. They were basically blaming the government
their changes to emergency housing for a spike and homelessness.

(46:42):
They claimed that homelessness in the city had increased by
more than fifty percent from September to January, which is
quite alarming, right, and they certainly found it alarming. Now
this Auckland councilor Angela Dalton, came on the program to
talk about this.

Speaker 16 (47:01):
Well, it's just the size of the increase, right, that
is really quite shocking for us. So we haven't seen
such a spike like that before.

Speaker 2 (47:11):
She was really really worried about it. When we were
were alarmed and the opposition was onto this today in
the house that you listened after two o'clock, Chris Hipkins
had this to say, why is.

Speaker 10 (47:20):
The number of rough sleepers in Auckland increased by fifty
three percent over the last four months and is it
a coincidence that that occurred at the same time his
government kicked six hundred and ninety Auckland households out of
emergency hous.

Speaker 2 (47:34):
It sounds bad right. Last night with Angela Dalton, we
wanted to know how that number that they've come up
with compared to previous quarters, so it's not seasonal it's
not because we've got warmer weather. I mean, what were
the numbers last dast January.

Speaker 16 (47:49):
I haven't got the numbers on me for January last year.
But this is not a stational spike that we're saying, right, do.

Speaker 2 (47:57):
You know how these numbers compare those to previous quarters?

Speaker 16 (48:01):
The specifically the spike is higher than previous.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
Quarters, so you can understand. We went to ask Auckland
Council today about the numbers because from this interview it
would seem that they exist. Turns out they don't. Auckland
Council this afternoon told us they couldn't provide the data
for previous surveys because they only started doing this homelessness

(48:27):
survey in September.

Speaker 16 (48:29):
Well, we're alarmed.

Speaker 2 (48:30):
I'm certainly alarmed too about the data that you're providing.
Twenty seven after five Bridge coming up after five thirty News,
we're going to speak to Nick Legget. He's Wellington Water chair.
Apparently the government seriously considering putting another Crown observer into Wellington,
not to the Council but to Wellington Water. This time

(48:51):
Nick Leggett after News, so.

Speaker 1 (49:03):
Again Pudding the challenging questions to the people at the
heart of the story. It's Ryan Bridge on hither du
for c Allen Drive with one New Zealand let's get
connected news talks.

Speaker 22 (49:22):
That'd be.

Speaker 2 (49:36):
Good even twenty five, twenty four minutes away from Sex
here on news talks. He'd be coming up after six
o'clock Brook van Velden on this idea that we'll have
online gambling and the money not going towards charitable causes
of here in New Zealand, but two profits offshore also
out of the UK. We'll talk to end Brady before
the end of the show at seven tonight. Out of

(49:58):
the UK. You thought what the the national government he
was doing to health un z and to Futtter Order
was bad. Well wait, do you see what labor is
doing to the NHS. NHS England is going to go
from thirteen thousand staff to six and a half thousand.
This is a labor Health Minister, Health secretary. We'll talk

(50:20):
to anybody about that before seven.

Speaker 4 (50:22):
Bryan Bridge.

Speaker 2 (50:24):
Right now, is Wellington about to get another Crown Observer?
How many sets of training wheels can you have for
a city? Simon Watson's The local government minister is considering
all options on this Apparently this is to do with
Wellington Water, not Wellington Council. Nick Leggett is the Wellington
Water chair. Of course, there's been the report that found

(50:44):
the troubled organizations being paying contract is much more than
the water authorities. The Mayor and others have called for
Knick's resignation, but he's not going anywhere. He's with me now,
Hi Nick, Hello Ryan, What do you reckon about? A
Crown observer?

Speaker 23 (51:00):
Would ultimately be the decision of the Minister, and I
don't understand. I'm not aware of what he's considering specifically
or what would likely happen, but I do remember that
the current Crown observer was put in place due to
concerns over water. I mean, I think that Wellington City

(51:21):
Council is one of the shareholders of Wellington Water has
made its views pretty clear in the last few weeks.
But there is a significant long term under investment in wastewater,
stormwater and of course our fresh water pipes in Wellington
and other services. And so there was Andy Foster when
he was Mayor of Wellington, did a report, a Mayoral

(51:43):
Task Force report I think at about twenty twenty, and
that showed, you know, really significant underspends, and the truth
is that councils are pulled in every other direction at
the moment and the many have chosen not to spend
on water.

Speaker 2 (51:58):
Well no, that that's true. The problem for if you're
a Wellington rate payer, you've got counsels who haven't been
investing in their water. But then also you guys have
been charging them too much when they do.

Speaker 23 (52:12):
Yes, And that's exactly what we've come clean about.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
So does change Is Wellington so broken that everyone needs
someone holding their hand? I mean, does every organization in
this last city need as crown observer?

Speaker 3 (52:24):
You do?

Speaker 23 (52:24):
You know what I think Wellington needs. Wellington needs a
new water entity that owns its own assets, can raise
money off those assets and get good value for the
money it spends, and get them replaced as soon as possible.
And that's what that's why getting Wellington water sorted. That's
why we've come to people and said, look, we've been

(52:47):
charged too much in some areas over time. It's not
good enough. We've made changes, we fixed that, but it's
all in preparation for this new water entity that will
start sort of next year.

Speaker 9 (52:58):
And you know, can I just give you an examp.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
We're running out of time, but will you will you
put your hand up to lead it?

Speaker 23 (53:05):
No anywhere near are you doing my jobs to fix
what we've what we've got and hand it over as
so it's as good. It's doing the best it possibly can.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
Right, Okay, Nick, we have to leave it there. I
appreciate your time. Nick, leg get Wellington water chair not
going anywhere. It's twenty one away from six.

Speaker 1 (53:20):
The huddle with New Zealand Southeby's International Realty Find you're
one of a kind.

Speaker 2 (53:25):
On the huddle tonight. Mike Munroe, former chief of staff
to just Sinda do Mike, good evening to you, Ryan,
how are you? Yeah? Good, thank you? And Marris Williamson's
here Auckland councilor former National Party minister of course, Morris
good evening, good evening. The school lunch program, Mike, I'll
be interested to hear your take on this, like politically
is it is it death by a thousand cuts or

(53:45):
are there enough New Zealanders who think this program is
a raught anyway? And not every kid needs the lunch,
the free lunch that they're getting.

Speaker 24 (53:54):
No, I don't agree with your letter comment. Look, this
is this is turning into a ambles and a real
political time time bomb, I should say for Luxon. I
mean today we had another day, another disaster with this
company sort of going into liquidation. You've got to remember
that this is one of those sort of Middle New
Zealand issues and it's threatening, threatening right now to engulf

(54:17):
lux and his government. You've got struggling fanilies from all
over the country who rely on this program. Now they
send their kids off to school without a lunch box
now because their belief is that the school's going to
provide a lunch and it's sort of not. That's not
happening as regularly and as reliably as it should be.
So Luxin's got to get his two ministers together, the

(54:38):
three educations has banged their heads together and tell them
to get the sorted before it starts to sort of
cause him a lot more trouble than it already has.

Speaker 2 (54:46):
Maurris, do you agree with that? Do you think it's
it's permeating his you know, his popularity and what's left
of it.

Speaker 25 (54:53):
I think it's an absolute total disaster. But what I
don't get, I really just don't understand it. I grew
up in a rural community a lot of poor people
and so on. Everybody got lunches in some way, for
some form somehow, and parents did it. They went without
for other things. And kids are at school for about
half of the number of days in a year. So
what do they eat with us six weeks of school

(55:14):
holidays over January? What do they eat during those days?
My view is this has just become such a political
football that people have got to be fed by the
government or they won't get fed at all. That didn't
happen right through the depression, didn't happen right through the forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties,
So why is it now we've made this dependent generation
that if you don't get the meal provided by the government,

(55:36):
then you won't get a meal at all.

Speaker 2 (55:38):
Yeah. And also if you don't eat the meal, then
you can't be hungry. Mike, Now, well, that's right.

Speaker 24 (55:46):
In fact, I can remember the experience was my own
children gained to school when lunch is coming home untouched,
and you still wonder how they get through the day
energy wise. But the fact is kids do need to eat,
and most kids will eat. And there's a lot of
people out there right now struggling with all sorts of
cost of living issues, who are finally it hard to

(56:08):
provide a reliable lunch service themselves for their kids. You
know that the state has stepped in to provide the service,
and the state steps steps in to do it, they
should at least do it properly.

Speaker 25 (56:20):
All right, I agree with the second part. I think
of the state does step under do it. I just
think there are other ways of If people are desperately
short of money, then there should be a welfare benefit
payment or something. But there are a hell of and
I don't like saying this, but I'll tell you right now,
the whole lot of parents who won't get off their
ass and butter some bread and stick something nutritional in
a little plastic pack and send the kid off. So well,

(56:42):
someone else is going to do it for me. And
I'm sorry. I just think that we've become so reliant
on the bloody state for so many things. On getting
sick of it.

Speaker 2 (56:49):
Marris Williamson and Mike Munroe here on the huddle tonight.
We're going to talk subscriptions next. If you've got a
Netflix subscription, if you've got a hellow Fresh subscription in particular,
then you'll want to be listening to this.

Speaker 1 (57:02):
The Huddle with New Zealand Southeby's International Realty, the Ones
with Local and Global Reach.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
Mike Munro and Marris Williamson on the Huddle tonight. Now
the Commerce Commission is taking Hello Fresh to court this
overclaims that it basically roped in people who had stopped
their subscriptions to Hello Fresh and they do food and
all sorts of groceries stop them. They then called them
out of the blue and said, oh, here's a deal
for you, and people didn't realize that that taking that

(57:31):
deal meant that it would reactivate their subscription and they're
locked into the cycling. It's just hard to shake it free. Mike,
have you had any problems getting out of a subscription
that you've signed up to?

Speaker 9 (57:43):
Yes? I have.

Speaker 24 (57:44):
Otherwise I've, you know, often taken a long time to
complete the process to get out of it. And it shouldn't.
It shouldn't take a long time. It should be simple.
They should be young, one or two buttons to press
and then then push submits. Look, I'm just pleased to
see the Communs Commision and taking some action here. They've
been doing a lot of tut tutting and sticking statements

(58:04):
on their website. Well that's not good enough. It's about
time they talk someone to court. And so look, I say,
all power to their arm in this case with Hello Fresh.
It's just it's the sneakiness of it that the tactics
they use to keep people engaged or as you say,
you know, the example you used to get people signed
up again when they've got no idea the signing up.

(58:25):
Where New Zealand's been dragging the chain on this for
a long time. Other countries have taken steps to tidy
it up, and it's about time we did as well.
And maybe this commerce commission actually against Hello Fresh will
sort of, you know, be the start of good things
to come in that regard.

Speaker 2 (58:38):
Yeah, it annoys the hell out of me, this stuff, Morris.
It really gets the belly. Is the fire in my
belly going? How about you?

Speaker 4 (58:47):
I'll tell you what.

Speaker 25 (58:47):
I've had an idea to develop the best app going.
If someone wants to be in the app development community,
go out that. You run it in the background. It
monitors all of your subscriptions. It alerts you if you
haven't been using one for two to three months. Because
I found a s. I had an Amazon Prime. I
turn up, my wife had an Amazon Prime, and my
son had an Amazon Prime, paying so much months to
have it. We could have done it all in the

(59:09):
one account. An app that monitored your things said, look,
you haven't used this account for three months?

Speaker 4 (59:13):
Do you want it to go?

Speaker 25 (59:14):
It sent all of the necessaries and closed it off.
I reckon that app would be just the most valuable
thing you could have on your device right now.

Speaker 2 (59:21):
Yeah, yeah, popular, Yeah, it would be, certainly would be.
You should be able to do it in one click.
That's what the what the consumer sid says, And I think,
but you.

Speaker 25 (59:29):
Don't even remember you've got you know, there are all
these movie services, and we signed up to tennis because
tennis has got a fantastic website.

Speaker 2 (59:37):
You watched a few.

Speaker 25 (59:37):
Games, and then you leave it, and then a while
later you find your bank statement. Bliddy, hell, have I
been paying that for the rest of this year? I
didn't you just you know something that told you you
had that, or you stupidly enough agreed to a trial.
You trial something, and of course the trial immediately clicks
into full time. If you didn't do anything about it.
It's not so much that sneaky stuff. I'm okay with

(59:58):
killing that off. I would just love to know everything
that's going on that I'm not using and that I'm
still paying for Mike.

Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
We've got Brock van Velden on the show after six tonight.
Should online gambling providers have to put some of their
profits towards the local community and local community groups? Because
Brook van Velden says no.

Speaker 24 (01:00:17):
Yeah, Well, I'm really stunned by this one. I can't
I can't work out why they why they wouldn't. I
mean all the sort of local pokes and companies that
operate machines and pubs, et cetera, that are required to
distribute about forty percent. I think it is of their revenue,
and I can't see why it wouldn't also apply to
online gathering gambling, I should say, because you know, rather

(01:00:40):
than give them money to communities, to sports clubs, kids
forty clubs, surf life savers or whatever, you know, all
this coins going off to oversee shareholders. So I just
don't know why you wouldn't bring it into line with
gambling elsewhere.

Speaker 25 (01:00:56):
Morris, She's got a reasonably good point, though she sort
of worry that you start creating enormous dependency for various
sort of community groups on gambling revenue. And I would
have thought, I mean, we are just being bombarded with
gambling ads now, The tav Nightly is just probably the
biggest advertiser on TV, and I would have thought that's

(01:01:17):
just nothing but a drain on society and a drain
on the economy, and a drain on poor people who
can't even pay for the kids lunches. So I don't
get this gambling stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:01:27):
Do I get it all.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
I get that there's good public health reasons for it. Yeah,
But the thing is, it's not that they're stopping it Morris.
So if it's going to happen, then surely you would
prefer that the profits of it go towards something decent
at least, you know.

Speaker 25 (01:01:40):
Well, okay, I'm in two much about it. I actually
think you're going to create dependency on social groups if
you are taking the taxes off it from people who
are gambling and giving them money as handouts, because then
one day if that particular gambling operation falls over and
goes ballly up, there'll be a yelling and screaming, well,
what are we going to do? We've lost all our
source of income.

Speaker 2 (01:02:01):
Yeah, okay, fair enough. Hey, your app idea is taking
off with the listeners. Morris, someone says, what is the
app that Morris mentioned?

Speaker 25 (01:02:09):
The writing it as we speak.

Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
But then actually someone else, John has text and to say, Morris,
there's already an app that does this. It's called rocket
money or go to rocket money dot com. Apparently that's
either a very good scam and we're about to all
get scammed, or it's a gentleman app. Thank you very
much for coming on, guys. Great to have you both.
Mike Monroe, former chief of staff to Jacindra Adourn, and

(01:02:34):
Morris Williamson, Auckland councilor, former National Party minister. Time is
nine minutes away from six. I also love this text
from Beck's him, Ryan, I've got a great idea. Give
the school lunch program to Hello Fresh. They will deliver
whether you want it or not.

Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
It's the Heather dupers Alan Drive Full Show podcast on
iHeartRadio powered by News Talks EBB.

Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
News TALKSB six minutes away from sex. Don't forget Van
Valden on the Pokey Well the online pokies. I suppose
if that's a term you want to use. She's with
us after six to talk about where those profits should go.
Over in Paris, so tonight's Saudi Arabia. They're having the
peace talks between the US and Ukraine's Zelenski won't be there,
but they're at least having some discussions. That's taking place

(01:03:19):
tonight and then Wednesday overnight, so tomorrow night our time.
In Paris, there are talks for this so called Coalition
of the Willing, and we are sending along one of
our defense force attashes heading from London from New Zealand
House in London over to Paris for this meeting. This
is the French and the Brits trying to get an
international force together and ready should there be some kind

(01:03:42):
of peace deal or should there be some kind of
truth or cease fire, at the very least that you
will have an international force ready to try and stop
Russia from re entering Ukraine with and that's even possible,
as anyone's guess, but we are at least stending well
along one of our defense forcetatashas to find out what's
going on there. Just gone five away from six Bryant
Bridge back to Wellington, just a very briefly Chris Luxon

(01:04:05):
today said that Wellington City Council was quote pretty lame,
oh because they're political leaders and actually did we need,
actually any of us need reminding of why they are
just such a dog's breakfast in Wellington again, Well apparently
we did.

Speaker 3 (01:04:23):
So.

Speaker 2 (01:04:24):
Wellington City Council is part of the Wellington Regional Leadership Group,
which is a bunch of councilors, a bunch of ewe,
a bunch of local community members. They're part of this
Wellington Regional Leadership Group committee, I should say whatever they
call themselves. Who cares anyway, They had the opportunity to
sign up for the Government's City Deals. Now this City

(01:04:48):
Deals is a new concept that national is brought in
and it will give you access to funding and finance
tools for infrastructure. Now that's obviously something that Wellington could
use very much. Please and thank you. Did they do
you think put their application in on time? Did they
put an application in at all? The answer is no.

(01:05:12):
It just beggars belief. Of all the cities in New
Zealand that could do with one of these things, it
would be Wellington. But they didn't. They said they didn't
have time. They're focusing on fixing their water issues on
their own to begin with, I mean it beggars belief,
doesn't it. And let's not forget they found the time
and the effort and the resource to put in a

(01:05:32):
submission on the Treaty's Principals Bill, which was going nowhere
is going nowhere. But they can't put in a bid
for a city deal. What's wrong Wellington? What's right Wellington?
Three minutes away from six.

Speaker 7 (01:05:47):
It's a real shame. And the Prime Minister had to
distract us from that important story by using the word
lamo and making that the headline in the Year of
Our Lord twenty twenty five. Is it possible to use
the word lamo without sounding like a little bit lame
o yourself like you're twelve?

Speaker 2 (01:06:01):
Yeah, and it takes you back to primary school, isn't it? Anyway?

Speaker 24 (01:06:04):
I read the.

Speaker 2 (01:06:05):
Story regardless work we cut through the other headlines. Good
to have you on the show tonight. Brook Van Valdman
is with us next talking about online gambling. You're on
News Talks EDB.

Speaker 4 (01:06:29):
Keeping track of where the money is flowing.

Speaker 1 (01:06:32):
The Business Hour with Ryan Bridge and Insurance and Investments,
Grow your Wealth, Protect Your Future.

Speaker 4 (01:06:39):
News Talks at b News Talks.

Speaker 2 (01:06:41):
Heb it is seven minutes after six. Great to have
your company tonight stocks down in the US and here
in New Zealand. This off the back of Trump's comments
about recession. We'll look at that with Brad Olsen in
just a few moments. Also, Jamie McKay puts those numbers
that we brought you last night on Fonterra into some
context and also brings us new numbers for our beef
farmers tonight. Right now, sky City and the Tab. They

(01:07:06):
are complaining that there won't be a level playing field
when this new regulation for online gambling comes into effect.
The government is going to auction off fifteen licenses to
run an online casino in New Zealand, but both local
and international companies will be allowed to bid for the licenses.
Here's the problem, lott O, Poke Machines and the Tab.

(01:07:27):
They all have to donate a portion of the money
that they make to community groups, but there'll be no
requirement for the winners of these fifteen options to do that.
Brook van Velden is the Internal Affairs Minister and she's
with me tonight. Hey, Brook Beneving Ryan, thank you for
being with me. I really appreciate you coming on. Wouldn't
it be better for us if domestic operators that you

(01:07:50):
know they pay tax here, they employ people here, they
give some money to local groups, etc. Wouldn't it be
better if they got the licenses?

Speaker 20 (01:07:59):
Already a range of people who are paying tax in
New Zealand for online gambling. It's not just you know,
some of our pokes and casinos. There's already thirty six
operators paying tax. What I think is really important here
is this is about trying to build a competitive market
where we are enabling people to be able to play

(01:08:21):
safely in a regulated market, which is not the case
at the moment. But we also are not trying to
restrict it so much that we're not actually channeling people
into that market. So if you look at a New
Zealand consumer wanting to play games, there's hundreds of websites
available at the moment, unregulated in New Zealand. How do

(01:08:41):
we get that balance right for the number which I've
set at fifteen to ensure that there is competition, there
is choice in the market, so that someone who does
want to play actually has those options. If we went
for just you know, domestic providers only well I'm sorry
to say, we're a very more country and there's only
about two people that could currently possibly into that market.

(01:09:05):
And I know when we look at things like supermarkets,
when we look at banks, when we don't have competition,
it's not a good market.

Speaker 2 (01:09:14):
But do we want a good market when it comes
to gambling.

Speaker 20 (01:09:19):
Well, what's really important is in order to have harm minimization,
which is at the heart of why I'm doing this,
we have to allow for there to be a range
of products that people actually want to play with. You know,
if you've got people at the moment, I think it's around.

Speaker 2 (01:09:33):
Three points Minister, Sorry, but that just sounds back to front.
In order to make sure we've got harm minimization, we
need to make sure we've got good options for people
to gamble. I mean, it sounds backwards, it's true, just
let me walk you through it.

Speaker 20 (01:09:47):
So at the moment, around three point six percent of
people in New Zealand gamble online already, but it's not
a safe market. There are no harm minimization standards for
things like age fever, for or being able to actually
withdraw your winnings. We're going to put in place some
strong regulations to ensure that children can't play online and

(01:10:09):
you can get your money out. There'll be a whole
bunch others as well. But in order to get people
who are currently gambling and people who might in the
future want to gamble into a safe and regulated market,
we have to have options for them to play with,
not just one or two providers. They have to be attractive.
There has to be a competition, and that makes for
a good market.

Speaker 2 (01:10:32):
What's to stop these people who are using these offshore
providers at the moment from just keeping on doing that.

Speaker 20 (01:10:39):
Well, it's possible, but this is called the channeling effect.
So what will end up doing is changing the market.
So people can advertise, they can let people know about
what their products are, but you've got some very strict
criteria about what you can and cannot do, and if
you breach any of those obligations could revoke your license

(01:11:01):
or give you a fine of up to five million dollars.
It's really important that we acknowledge people do gamble online,
but it is currently unsafe in New Zealand. So if
you're put in place those harmonimization standards.

Speaker 2 (01:11:15):
Okay, But if you're a foreign foreign gambling online gambling
company you've currently got some market share in New Zealand.
Presumably you've attracted customers by advertising to them in some way,
shape or form. Who's going to be policing online ads
for gambling.

Speaker 20 (01:11:33):
Well, at the moment ads for online gambling are illegal,
that can't happen, but the IA do work to take
them down. That is one of the functions of DEA,
and I understand the Internet service providers have been very
willing to take down illegal advertising of online gambling. What
will happen going forward is if there are people who

(01:11:55):
have licenses in other jurisdictions, and bear in mind the
UK has hundreds of different licenses online gambling. If any
of those people are illegally operating in New Zealand, our regulator,
through DEA, will get in touch with international regulators to
let them know that they're breaching our laws and that

(01:12:16):
could be a breach of their own license abilities and
other jurisdictions. So having our regulator work across borders to
let people know that there's been breaches in our country
will help to create this regulated, safe market.

Speaker 2 (01:12:31):
Presumably you've had advice up the wazoo on this. How
many people do you imagine that this is going to
stop problem gambling.

Speaker 20 (01:12:39):
Well, it's actually really hard to know. You know, we
don't have good data at the moment on even how
many people are specifically problem gamblers and how many people
have been helped by problem gambling services. My aim with
regulating the market is that we will actually capture better
data on who is gambling online and has a problem

(01:13:03):
with it. So, for example, a licensed provider would need
to show DIA over time how many people are using
their services and would even have breakdown data on what
that type of use has been like. So we can
actually capture data that we don't currently have because the
market is unregulated.

Speaker 2 (01:13:23):
Okay, good luck with this, Brook. I note that the
tax take will be what around thirteen million bucks a
year for the first few years, so I mean, yeah,
good luck. It sounds very It sounds like it's going
to be an uphill battle if I'm being honest, to
get to actually make this something that the public will
find palatable, just because gambling is so destructive for people.

(01:13:46):
That's Brook van Valde and the Internal Affairs Minister. It's
gone fourteen minutes after six. Coming up next, we're going
to look at the markets in the US and here
in New Zealand off the back of recession fares in
the States.

Speaker 1 (01:13:56):
It's the header dupas Alan Drive Full Show podcast on
my Heart Radio Power It by Newstalk ZEBBI.

Speaker 2 (01:14:04):
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(01:14:49):
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Speaker 4 (01:15:00):
Everything from SMEs to the big corporates.

Speaker 1 (01:15:03):
The Business Hour with Ryan Bridge and Man's Insurance and Investments.

Speaker 4 (01:15:08):
Grew your wealth, Protect your future newstalks.

Speaker 2 (01:15:10):
That'd be a bunch of feedback on Brook van Valdem.
We'll get to that shortly, along with Jamie McKay, who's
got an update on Fonterra for us like we predicted
for you yesterday. The US market's got the jitters today,
this after Donald Trump's comments about the economy refused to
rull out of recession. Wall Street worst day for twenty
twenty five so far, S and P five hundred down
two point seven, NASDAK down four. Here in Australia and

(01:15:33):
New Zealand, we were down the nz aex fifty, the
ASEX two hundred, both down point eight percent. Brad Olsen
is Informetric's principal economist. He's with me now, hey, Brad,
good evening. Is this an overreaction, do you reckon or
a real concern?

Speaker 26 (01:15:48):
I think it's some pretty valid concerns coming out of
the US, and really this is just condensing all of
that risk, all of that worry, all of that uncertainty
that's been coming through. When you know the president and
is asked directly, are we on track for a recession,
and he doesn't immediately say no, we're not. I think
that's a pretty strong signal to investors, and certainly that's

(01:16:09):
how the market's taken it. That Actually the worry from
the new US president over how people's stocks do, how
the markets are going, how the economy is going. He's
willing to sort of give that up, and he's showing
that that's already happening. So I think people have been
sort of wavering. If you look at where the markets
were after Trump was elected, there was a real sort

(01:16:29):
of rally that came through an expectation there was a
lot of growth possibly coming forward, and everyone sort of
ignored the negatives. But I think there's been something like
three point four trillion US dollars that's been wiped off
since you know, those some of those higher points have
come through. So you are now into a position where
I think people are really going, look, we're just not

(01:16:49):
sure what the fundamentals of growth in the US economy are.
Of course, how the US economy goes has implications for
global growth, exports and everything else, which is why our
markets and the Asian markets have also taken a dive.
Long story short, no one's quite sure where they're making
money in the short term.

Speaker 2 (01:17:06):
From Yeah, and it is a concern for I mean,
I was saying last night that forget about Hipkins, Luckson's
biggest problem or biggest political opponent is actually Trump because
he's he could potentially put the kibosh on our growth plans, right.
I mean, that is a real risk, absolutely, and given that,
you know the focus of our sort of trade growth

(01:17:27):
over the last year or two has been a lot
more around the US economy. You know, that was an
area that did quite well for US, but it's now
in a much shakier position.

Speaker 16 (01:17:35):
I think.

Speaker 26 (01:17:35):
Also it doesn't help the economic tone. You know, economists
in New Zealand, and to be fair, across the world
have talked about some of those greenish shoots starting to
show through this year, some of those better economic numbers.
Really hard to convince people that that's actually coming through
when all they're reading about is that the markets are
losing money. If they do go and check their kei
we saver or you know, they're investing account showing a

(01:17:56):
bit of a blood bath there. I mean, none of
those numbers are easy to comprehen and I think it
does just put the jitters amongst not only the markets,
but actual real households going, well, look, I'm putting my
money into these investments.

Speaker 2 (01:18:07):
I'm a little bit worried.

Speaker 26 (01:18:09):
I do think it's important that people realize that there
always is quite a lot of volatility in the numbers.
That's sort of the nature of the stock market. And
unless you're really good at putting three phones to ears
and yelling into all of them like they do at
the New York Stock Exchange, you probably shouldn't be too worried.
You shouldn't be thinking about those sort of days day variations.
You should be hopefully thinking about it for the long term,

(01:18:30):
but assessing your risk, because let's be clear, this risk tone,
this worry, this volatility, it's not going away anytime soon.

Speaker 2 (01:18:38):
Brad, thank you for that. Brad Olsen and the Metrics
principal economists on news talks thereb twenty one minutes after six,
we were talking about some of the commodity prices there
to do with our tradeing. Jamie McKay has an update
on that for us.

Speaker 1 (01:18:48):
Next the Rural Report with msd Annimal Health, Home of
Sense of Dairy at All Flags.

Speaker 2 (01:18:55):
News Talks theirb It is twenty four minutes after six.
Great to have your company. Jamie McKay is with us.
Jamie is hosted the Country of course here on Newstalk ZMB,
and we were talking yesterday about a whole bunch of
stuff to do with Fonterra. So we'll get into this now.
Jamie's with us. Hi, Jamie.

Speaker 27 (01:19:10):
Good evening, Ryan.

Speaker 2 (01:19:11):
Now Fonterra is just going from strength to strength. We
had a bit on this on the show yesterday, but
you put it in perspective for us, How well are
they doing well?

Speaker 27 (01:19:20):
They're doing very well, and I think the farmers are
going to do pretty well this year as well. I
guess it's more good news for dairy farmers. On top
of what you discussed yesterday about that full year earnings
guidance being lifted to fifty five to seventy five cents
per share. Remembering this is on top of a ten
dollar fore cast milk price, they're going to effectively have

(01:19:42):
a dividend by my calculation, any anyhow of anywhere between
thirty three and sixty cents if it gets to sixty cents,
it'll be the best dividend in Fonterra's history. The previous
best was fifty five cents and the season just being
twenty three twenty four. And to put that ten dollar
milk price ryan into some sort of historic perspective, the

(01:20:04):
previous best was nine dollars thirty in the twenty one
twenty two season. But it's generally considered that the eight
dollars forty payout way back in twenty thirteen fourteen more
than a decade ago, is the best inflation adjusted milk
price in Fonterra's history. And just having a look at
that share price earlier this afternoon, it was trading at

(01:20:27):
four dollars eighty six. The Fonterra co Op farmer share price,
this is the one that the farmers trade amongst themselves.
It was languishing at just over two dollars in November
twenty twenty three, so it's more than doubled in the
past year, and you would have to say Fonterra farmers
have got to be pretty happy with the direction Miles
Hurrell and Peter McBride are driving the cooperative.

Speaker 2 (01:20:50):
Absolutely, and not just dairy of course beef as well.
We had a good second half last year and actually
a good start to twenty twenty five as well for
farmgate beef pricing.

Speaker 27 (01:21:00):
Well, despite Donald Trump, beef prices Ryan are at a
record highs and they look like maintaining that tat Trump
and his tariff's aside, certainly through this season. And I
was talking to Jen Corchran out of Rabobank. They've just
released their Q one beef quarterly report. She's saying that

(01:21:22):
it's going to take three or four years to rebuild
that US herd after all the issues they've had over
there with drought and all that sort of stuff. So
the prospect for beef for beef farmers in this country
is pretty strong for the next three to four seasons.
Despite that global beef production is contracting a wee bit
and also here in New Zealand, we're expecting our beef

(01:21:44):
production to be down around five to six percent from
year on year quarter one twenty twenty four, and that's
partly because of the fallout of fewer beef carts being
read a couple of years ago when the prices weren't
too flash. So I can tell you there will be
lots of beefclfs red I would imagine in New Zealand

(01:22:04):
this season, because they're going to be worth gold.

Speaker 2 (01:22:07):
And just finding you've got some receipts from the biggest
carbon emitters in the world. How do our cows burping rank?

Speaker 27 (01:22:15):
Well, I think our cows burping aren't even a problem.
I mean I have said all along, or argued all along, Ryan,
that our farmers are carbon neutral, if not carbon positive.
We're not counting everything on farm that sequestas carbon. Yes,
we count the vegetation, the trees. We're not counting the
grass or the soil. We won't go down that track today.

(01:22:36):
But I came across an interesting fact that half of
the world's climate heating carbon emissions come from the fossil
fuels produced by just thirty six companies. Those thirty six
major fossil fuel companies were responsible for more than twenty
billion tons of CO two emissions in twenty twenty three.

(01:22:58):
Now listen to this one. If Saudi Aramco was a country,
the big fossil fuel company, if it was a country,
it would be the fourth biggest polluter in the world
after China, the US and India. While if Exxon Mobile
was responsible was a country, it would be responsible for
about the same emissions as Germany, the world's ninth biggest polluter.

(01:23:22):
So I've said all along Rhine and no one's changing
my mind. Methane emitting ruminants aren't the problem. It's man
and woman burning fossil fuels.

Speaker 2 (01:23:32):
Jamie, thank you for that, Jamie McKay, host to the
country here on News TALKSB twenty nine minutes after six.
Coming up next elon Musk and Tesla, the whole kickback
against Musk and Trump now affecting cars here in New Zealand.
That's next bet too.

Speaker 4 (01:24:02):
If it's to do with money, it matters to you.

Speaker 1 (01:24:05):
The Business Hour with Ryan Bridge and Mayor's Insurance and Investments,
Grow your wealth, Protect your future, Newstalks NB right and.

Speaker 2 (01:24:15):
Bread Rich Your on News Talks MB is twenty three
minutes away from seven. We're going to head to Inde
Brady in the UK before the top of the hour.
Interesting report out from MB today. This is on the
Maldi economy. So the goal for the Maldi economy was
this is what the government had had set. The goal
was one hundred billion dollars by twenty thirty. Now this

(01:24:37):
new report says that it has fas surpassed that. So
the report that was done by MB but also by Japunicorcity,
a bunch of other organizations, government agencies. I should say
it's grown from contributing seventeen billion dollars to New Zealand's
GDP in twenty eighteen to thirty two billion dollars in
twenty twenty three. That's a six point five percent contribution

(01:24:58):
up to an eight point nine contribution. MALDI assets grown
from sixty nine billion and twenty eighteen to one hundred
and twenty six billion and twenty three. That is an
increase of eighty three percent, So a massive increase not
only in their asset base but in their contribution to
the economy as well, which you've got to say has
got to be a good thing. Twenty two minutes away

(01:25:20):
from seven on Newstalksic B. Winston Peters has put out
a press release today on Ferry Holdings. This is the
group he's set up. The company he has set up,
I should say, to run the ferries, procure the fairies,
all of that stuff. I'll tell you who's on the
board in just a moment. Ryan Bridge right now, fifty
two year old man has been arrested after a spate
of attacks on evs. In Auckland, Teslas and polestars have

(01:25:42):
been targeted with spray paint, basically making them unsafe to
drive because they spray the windows, and they spray the
mirrors and they spray the lights. Police are still considering charges,
but this is happening all around the world. Tesla facilities
have been attacked overseas protest against Elon Musk all con
City Electric vehicles directed Greg Larson is with me, Greg,
Good evening.

Speaker 21 (01:26:03):
H Roan, how are you?

Speaker 5 (01:26:04):
Yeah?

Speaker 16 (01:26:04):
Good?

Speaker 2 (01:26:04):
Thank you? So do you reckon this is? This is
all deliberate and all to do with Elon.

Speaker 21 (01:26:09):
Musk, I would say so, it's quite interesting that a
motor vehicleed brand has been has become a political football
and violence and the Gilante kind of activities are happening
because of a vehicle brand.

Speaker 2 (01:26:26):
Yeah, do you think, well, what is your assessment at
the moment? EV's sales have obviously been down? Is that
what you're experiencing? And are people picking some over others?

Speaker 19 (01:26:36):
Well?

Speaker 21 (01:26:36):
Yeah, EV sales are down, and I think it's probably
got to a plateau where it is aligned with picture
entering cars and it's sitting sitting nicely as a percentage
of how many cars are on the road. But now
when you get these kind of things that are happening
all around the world, it obviously brings the the EB
community to the forefront, that's for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:26:56):
And has anyone said to you, I don't want an
ev tes.

Speaker 21 (01:27:03):
No, nothing like that yet. Look, you know, there are
always a few muppets that will do silly things to
make a stance. But you know, I've just found out that,
you know, somebody has been arrested, and it'll be very
interesting to see what they do with that, you know,
to the point where that person even bandled a poster
which is not actually a you know, it must be

(01:27:25):
a good at all. So it just shows you where
the mentality is.

Speaker 2 (01:27:28):
Hey, the cheaper Chinese imports electric vehicle imports, are they
any good?

Speaker 21 (01:27:36):
Look, I'm really impressed, you know, to tell the truth,
if we were talking about something like this five or
six years ago, pro we had a different conversation. But
now the products and what the Chinese are putting onto
the market is extremely good. They just don't have brand recognition.
So you know, Tesla has a great brand. It's you know,
it's the apple of the carf of phones and so so. Yeah,

(01:28:00):
once his brains get some recognition and people start driving them,
they'll be quite impressed.

Speaker 2 (01:28:04):
Okay, Greg, thank you for that. Greg Lars and Auckland
City Electric Vehicles, director of this fifty two year old
man apparently has been arrested. You'll be pleased to know
if you've got an EV and you're parking on the
street tonight in Auckland, nineteen away from seven Ryan Bridge.
So Winston Peters has appointed two more board members, this
to the company Ferry Holdings Board Limited, Catherine Rich and

(01:28:27):
Captain Ian McLeod. He says they bring pragmatic and practical experience.
You'll know this already, but Chris McKenzie, deputy chair here
the Simpson as in Helen Clark said the Simpson. She's
on the board too, along with Director Greg Lowe. He
said the board is already hard at work with shipyard
engagements continuing, alternative proposals being assessed because of course they've

(01:28:48):
got until the end of the month to come up
with a proposal for procurement of some new ships, otherwise
Nikola Willis Plan B gets initiated. He says, Missus rich
and Captain McLeod bring pragmatic skills and insight to the
board table, with Missus Richard's knowledge of customer's need from
the New Zealand supply chain as an industry body chief
executive and Captain McLeod's experiences as a maritime expert and shipmaster.

(01:29:13):
So there you go. That's Winston Peter's before he heads
off to Washington, eighteen minutes away from seven, now swearing
I want to get to this before seven o'clock. We've
also got end of Brady to get to, so perhaps
I'll save this till just before seven. But apparently it
does a lot for your pain. When you stub your toe,
you hurt yourself and you swear it is good for you,

(01:29:34):
So don't feel bad when you do it. But I'll
tell you more about what that research says before seven.

Speaker 4 (01:29:38):
Croating the numbers and getting the results.

Speaker 1 (01:29:41):
It's Ryan Bridge with the Business Hour and mass insurance
and investments.

Speaker 4 (01:29:46):
Grew your wealth, protect your future The News Talks.

Speaker 2 (01:29:49):
NB quarter to seven on News talksb ind Of Brady's
a UK correspondent. End A good evening to you.

Speaker 19 (01:29:56):
Hey, Ryan, great speak to him?

Speaker 2 (01:29:57):
What's happening with these two ships that collided this the
coast of Yorkshire and carrying some pretty highly toxic stuff.
What's happening with them?

Speaker 19 (01:30:06):
So investigation underway. We don't know what happened or who's
to blame, basically, but what we do know is what
they were carrying. So the American oil tanker, it turns out,
was carrying jet fuel kerosene two hundred and twenty thousand barrels,
all of which will now be leaking into the North
Sea off the Yorkshire coast. And this container ship, which
was traveling under the Portuguese flag, we're told that was

(01:30:29):
carrying sodium cyanide. So all of this toxic chemicals and
aviation fuel leaking into the North Sea. This is a
hugely important fishing area and it's also the season now
coming up where wildlife and birds mate, and that Yorkshire
coast area could be devastated. We're told forty two percent

(01:30:50):
of all fish consumed in the UK are brought ashore
along that stretch, and that's what happened ten miles off
the coast yesterday.

Speaker 2 (01:30:59):
That's not great. Now there's some in pay. We're spoken
about him before convicted for punching one of his constituents.
He's now quit. This is a problem for Starmer.

Speaker 19 (01:31:10):
So there's going to be a by election and this
will be the first by election since Starmer's victory in
July of last year. Domestically he's had a rocky ride.
He's made some tough decisions the budget, for example, a
lot of people feel that's kind of punishing business. And
now the people of Runcorn up in Cheshire in the
northwest will get the chance to replace Mike Amesbury. So

(01:31:31):
he was the guy who was filmed on CCTV punching
a constituent in the head in the early hours of
the morning last year. He's had discussion having had a
night out and a man approached him to talk about
roadworks in the area and it ended with a conviction
for assault. So Ainsbury has now sut down. There will
be a by election and I think the problem for

(01:31:51):
Starmar is, you know, traditionally governments get a bloody nose
in by elections and Nigel Fraj's Reform Party, if we
believe the polls are very very popular right now twenty
one percent nationwide so Faras will be zoning in on
Runcorn his party came second there last year at the
actual election. That this is the first kind of domestic

(01:32:12):
bloody nose for Starmar.

Speaker 2 (01:32:13):
Yeah, now, mobile phone has been stolen in London last year?
How many.

Speaker 19 (01:32:19):
Seventy thousand, one hundred plus that was? That was the
number last year. All adds up to somewhere in the
region of about one hundred and forty million dollars of
a criminal enterprise with people's hands. As you're walking along
the street, guys operating in pairs on e bikes and
e scooters and they just zip along, and people are

(01:32:41):
coming out of their offices for their lunch break, tourists
are going on Google Maps trying to find where they're going,
and you've got two and a half thousand dollars of
an electrical item in your hand, and people are thinking
that you know they're safe. And these gangs are absolutely ruthless.
The phones are gone within seconds and within days they're
on their way to nig Area or China where they

(01:33:01):
are wiped and resold or stripped down for parts. It's
shocking and I would say the number from personal experience,
I've never had my phone stoll. A lot of the
people I work with have and they didn't report it
to the police because they just thought, what's the point,
They'll never catch them. And I mean in terms of policing,
we've seen an operation last month two hundred and thirty

(01:33:22):
people arrested in one week. Some police are cracking down
Starmer's bringing in a law now where they don't need
a search warrant to go into a house where people
believe them. All the phone is because a lot of
people are using find my phone and they're going to
the police and saying, look, it's at number one Smith Street,
I can see it, and they're being told, well, we
don't have a warrant to set that address. So a

(01:33:44):
lot of the policing needs to tighten up really big time.

Speaker 2 (01:33:47):
Goodness me. Hey, the NHS, I was reading today about
some pretty seem like pretty significant NHS cutstead coming. This
is from a labor Health sacretary. So n Chas England
will lose half its staff. This is from thirteen thousand
down to six and a half thousand. Tired team's been
exed saving money, avoiding duplication. I'm assuming this is beck

(01:34:07):
office stuff. This is policy stuff, not frontline middle management.

Speaker 19 (01:34:12):
It's absolutely not nurses and doctors and pediatricians and cancer specialists.
This is middle management. And I think what we're seeing
is the labor government getting their feet under the table
looking at the books and they're realizing where all the
money goes. And Streeting has no choice. I mean, the
NHS is on its knees. I heard someone tell me

(01:34:32):
a story the other day how they'd in Germany they'd
gone to A and E and they'd waited four hours
to be seen, and I was like, I was actually
in Berlin for the election coverage, and I was like, well,
four hours is pretty good going in England, but in
Germany they were absolutely horrified. They were telling all their
friends that they'd been to the A and E room
and it took four hours to see a doctor. Streeting realizes,

(01:34:56):
I think he's got long term ambitions to be prime minister.
By the way, this guy very very ambitious. He realizes
that the NHS is broken and they're looking at where
the money is going, and it's going on policymakers and
middle management.

Speaker 2 (01:35:10):
Sounds a bit like someone down here called who's our
health minister? Whose name has just escaped me Simon brown Round.
It sounds a very similar situation to your Wes streeting
and to thank you for that. End of Brady Are
UK correspondent ten away from seven Here on News talksb
It's the Heather too.

Speaker 1 (01:35:29):
For see Alan Drive Full Show podcast on iHeartRadio powered
by News Talk ZBB.

Speaker 2 (01:35:35):
News Talks ZBB seven minutes away from seven. This research art, well,
it's actually old research, but it's sort of rehashing this
idea that swearing, so when you get hurt, when you
get injured physically, I mean, swearing is kind of good
for you. It increases your pain tolerance. A couple of researchers,
a couple of academics looked at this a few years
back and they found that the use of the F word,

(01:35:58):
so when you get hurt, if you say the F word,
they compared that to more neutral words that they made up,
like fouch and twizz. Pipe was another one because it's
lame words. I know, it's a bit like lame o
from lux and today. Anyway, they found that swearing was
linked with increased pain tolerance. And I think this is

(01:36:18):
true if you're hurt, if you get a stub toe,
for example, swearing just feels good. And it also I
think indicates to people around you just how much pain
you're in. You know, like if you say, jeep as
I stub my toe, no one's going to care. But
if you say if, if you know, see something, then

(01:36:39):
people are going to pay attention and they're going to
understand you. And that's really all you want when you're
in pain. It's to be understood, you know, for others
to know how much pain you're in. Really what you
want is for mom to come and give you a
kiss and make it all better. And swearing will get
her attention too. Surely, what have we going out to tonight?
As right?

Speaker 7 (01:36:58):
So are the King right?

Speaker 2 (01:37:00):
For Commonwealth Day?

Speaker 7 (01:37:01):
He's done a radio show on Apple Music called The
King's Music Room, and he's picked some of his favorite
songs from all around the Commonwealth, and like he played
each one and then talked a little bit about why
he picked it. New Zealand did get in there, Dame
Kenny Cannell got a song in there, so I really
should be playing that that. I just I'm obsessed with
this choice he's made here Hot Hot Hot by Arrow.

(01:37:21):
Arrow being a musician from the Caribbean island of Montserrat,
which is in the Commonwealth is I found out today
when I read the story. He released the song. Yeah,
he released the song Hot, Hot Hot in the eighties.
I didn't know it was by him, but you hear
it at football games all the time. And the King
decided he wanted this one in here because the last
time he even sided Monserrat it was very hot, so

(01:37:42):
hot from Monserrat.

Speaker 2 (01:37:43):
I wonder if he dances around the pells to this.

Speaker 7 (01:37:46):
Oh, probably reckon forming like a conga line with all
the you know, with the Queen and you know, with
Fergie and everybody else in all the service.

Speaker 16 (01:37:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:37:53):
Probably all right, we'll leave you with this. Thank you, Vance,
Thanks for listening everyone, Thanks for all your feedback. See tomorrow.

Speaker 22 (01:38:11):
How are you feeling, how are you feeling, how you feeling,
how you feeling?

Speaker 4 (01:38:34):
How are you feeling?

Speaker 9 (01:38:36):
How are you feeling?

Speaker 4 (01:38:38):
How you feeling? How you feeling?

Speaker 17 (01:38:50):
People?

Speaker 22 (01:38:50):
Anybody, people, anybody people, anybody people, anybody.

Speaker 5 (01:39:29):
How you feel, how you feeling.

Speaker 22 (01:39:36):
People in the Bobby, people in the baby, people in
the Bobby, people in the baby.

Speaker 4 (01:39:44):
How you feel.

Speaker 16 (01:39:46):
You feel.

Speaker 22 (01:39:52):
People in the Bobby, people in the baby, people in
the baby, people in the bab.

Speaker 1 (01:40:01):
For more from hither, Duplessy Allen Drive. Listen live to
News Talks' b from four pm, weekdays or follow the
podcast On iHeartRadio

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