Andrew Dickens Afternoons

Do I need to remind you that politics is show business? It's all about seeming to be the best instead of necessarily being the best. This is why politicians often say the most ridiculous things and make the most outlandish promises. It’s also why they boil complex issues down to simple catchy slogans which are repeated ad nauseum until they gain their own reality. But eventually, reality catches up. Yesterday’s backdown over the Fast-Track legislation is proof of that. Under the coalition’s original proposal Simeon Brown, Shane Jones and Chris Bishop had the power to green-light anything, even if all advice was against it. This was all in service of the thesis that New Zealand is bogged down in red tape. A slogan hammered time and time again in the election until a significant number of electors believed that giving 3 ministers such power was without risk - and possibly good for the country. The coalition’s answer was totalitarian. I was flabbergasted when I first read the policy and astounded that there was

The corner has been turned. The 5-year pandemic pandemonium has been tamed. Inflation is down and we've had the first interest rate cut since the Reserve Bank realised they’d overstimulated everything 5 years ago. Proof that tax cuts were not inflationary, says the Finance Minister. And that is the case, but it’s not a sign that the cost of living crisis is over. Inflation and cost of living increases are two heads of the same monster. Tax cuts are not being sucked up by discretionary spending. But they are by increases in charges brought about by a cut in Government spending, a continued housing shortage and its costs, and local Government trying to bridge the infrastructure deficit that’s been growing for decades. For example, my family's tax cuts are going straight onto increased rates and increased public transport costs now that the subsidies have ended. But put on your dancing shoes - said Thomas Couglan at the Herald in the weekend. The rock star economy is back. And we can thank Luxon and Willis. This

The winter solstice was on June 20 and 21. The longest night and the shortest day, but wisdom tells us that the depths of winter does not fall until 6 weeks after the solstice. It takes a while for actions to provoke a reaction. So right now is the depths of winter and much is at the worst it has ever been and ever will be. The All Blacks lost. In front of a disappointing crowd. Many are saying the poor crowd was down to economic hardship in the capital as the Government wages war on the size of the public service. The public service in Wellington is being slashed to cut the government spending to help the economy. However, this is all happening just as the Reserve Bank tries to fix their Covid mistake. We’re in a double squeeze.   In Covid, the Reserve Bank underestimated how well we’d operate under Covid lockdowns. With the benefit of hindsight, we know they splashed too much virtually free money. So now they have to strangle our economy after setting it on fire. It’s debatable whether we needed a double sq

I have always avoided getting into the Treaty principles debate.    It’s just too much of a swamp to get trapped in.    Either you’re for David Seymour's debate on a reset, in which case some will call you a racist.    Or you’re against a select committee debate means the racists will call you a wokester.    Both of which are gross exaggerations of what’s really going down, so it’s best to just avoid it.    However, with the resignation of Dr Anthony Jordan from the Pharmac board, I find myself truly confused.    Dr Jordan quit over the Government's treaty directive. David Seymour told Pharmac it was inappropriate for the agency to keep considering the Treaty of Waitangi in the health sector.   Dr Jordan said he "could not with good conscience" continue to work for the agency following that direction.    But as an outsider, I can’t understand how the treaty was factored into Pharmac’s decisions.    If ever there was an agency that’s work was based on need, it’s Pharmac. Everybody gets sick, everybody needs me

There is only one story in town. I realised this when I entered the newsroom and everyone was still itching to talk about it. Firstly, I am so glad the assassin was unsuccessful. The repercussions from this attempt are already dramatic enough. If Trump had been slaughtered, then the reaction could have been disastrous for the United States. Imagine January 6 and the insurrection and then multiply that horror by a thousand. Every Trumpist and their dog would be reaching for their guns right now and the chances of an uprising or a civil war would have increased dramatically. Obviously, there was a failure in the security detail, the assassination was only averted by a chance movement of the president's head, even though he was already in the sights of a Secret Service sniper. This is disturbing - but also unfortunate in that the rumour mill online now suggests that the Biden camp had deliberately scaled down security for Trump despite obvious signs the whole election race was getting tetchy. I don't believe thi

I wasn't here last week because I was attending a funeral. A dear friend. 58 years old. Gut cancer. A reminder to us all- live life. Don't put things off. So, last week I thought I'd talk about the ferry debate and I thought that the issue would be over by now. But it's not. It rumbles on like the stubbed toe it is. Today, the Government receives a report that will outline some of the options going forward and what cancellation of the ferries will cost. This is not an insubstantial amount. Industry sources believe it's $200-$300 million dollars. Supporters of the Government say that's a bargain compared to spending billions on unnecessary rail infrastructure. And that answered a question I'd had all along. I've been confused at the continual assertion that the ferries were gold plated. They appear to be a very reasonable price, mostly because they were ordered during the Covid lull and the shipbuilders were grateful for the business. Yes they were bigger, and yes that means work on the wharves. But these whar

On this day 60 years ago, 4 young lads from Liverpool arrived in Wellington on a plane to commence a week long tour of New Zealand. And they changed everything. It was the Beatles. It wasn't like we weren't warned. The week before was chaos as they toured Australia. 250,000 youngsters welcomed the band in sleepy old Adelaide. But the older generation were not prepared for the excitement, the hysteria and disorder that followed the band wherever they went. They were agog. It was the beginning of the generation gap. It was the beginning of the rise of youth culture. The Beatles opened New Zealand's eyes. The advent of international travel and of television meant they were the world's first international superstars and they were here. Andrew Dickens chats with listeners who remember the day and the week. The adventures are legendary. Most were extraordinarily young and yet the time is burnt into their memory. Take a trip. LISTEN ABOVE When We Was Fab: Inside the Beatles Australasian Tour 1964 (Woodland Press). A

So I went to a party at the weekend. Quite a swanky one. Negronis and burgers and all sorts of people. Judges and doctors and advertising people and even musicians.  An old mate was there, a card-carrying lefty.  We're chatting and he says he's part of an urbanism group. Studying and advocating for urban development, and he says, "you right-wing ZB types would hate it."  So I said, "I beg your pardon?"  What part of having a well-designed and functional city is either left-wing or right-wing? It's not about politics it's about practicality. Who doesn't want a functioning public transport system? Who doesn't want accommodation solutions for the poor and the young so they don't have to leave the cities for a house? By the way right-wingers love trains. Mussolini made them run on time.  The politicisation of city designs is why nothing ever happens anymore and our cities just get worse and worse.  So it was good to open the paper on Sunday and see the Auckland mayor talking about that city's abortive light rail

A report from Auckland Council's boarding house inspectors shows out of 44 properties suspected to be breaking the law, 40 were “operating unauthorised transient accommodation or boarding houses.”  Many had issues with fire safety breaches, growing numbers of gang-affiliated guests, and owners questioning council authority.  Andrew Dickens had two callers today who discussed their situations.  The first, Jamie, lives in a boarding house with his son.   Jamie told Andrew Dickens “There’s one room here that’s $500 – the guy’s killing it,”  Jamie said “You’re living with alcoholics and drug users. I’ve had to send my kid to his mum’s because it’s no place for a kid.”  The second, John, owns two boarding houses and lives there himself.  John told Andrew Dickens “When they come here, they are lost. When I give them a room, they sleep for a week - they are that exhausted.”  John said “It’s an ideal situation to get these people off the street and give them independence.”  LISTEN ABOVE. See omnystudio.com/listener f

I presume the lead story in the Herald on Sunday was welcomed by police and those behind our stronger gun laws.   An Auckland pensioner and his daughter have been caught for legally buying 13 guns for the Comancheros motorcycle gang.   It's the latest of dozens of discoveries by police of licensed gun owners buying for gangs who cannot legally purchase guns.   It was validation of good old-fashioned police work. Over the past 4 years the police have analysed more than 350,000 sales records looking for suspicious patterns of spending.    They then correlate the purchases with the records of gun owners, and they discover the gang's straw buyers.   But to me, it also validates the strengthening of the laws back in 2019 after the Christchurch mosque massacre.   That saw the banning of military-style semi-automatics, stricter rules on the “fit and proper” test to hold a license, the establishment of a gun registry, and a set of rules designed to ensure gun clubs and ranges are safe places.   At the time, gun owner

Welcome to Budget Week. Which I am looking forward to. After all the warnings from economists and world agencies like the OECD, that this is the wrong part of an economic cycle to bring in tax cuts, it ill be interesting to see the way they're going to pull it off. Personally, I can't see the budget being nearly as harsh, nearly as radical or nearly as transformational and beneficial as all the politicians say. I've already decided to call it the bad day at the office budget. Which we'll all get through. Meanwhile, we're getting little bones thrown at us to keep the headlines flowing. $50 million odd to hire teachers feels like a small change when you look at the entire education wage budget. My grizzle today is about doctors. The Waikato times weekend paper featured a couple of young doctors at Waikato Hospital and their impossible workload. Both are just 27 years old, 4 years out of school. 10 years into learning their trade. One ended out working alone on a cardiology ward with 100 patients in it. There sh

Now, I'm not part of the tribe who automatically thinks that Auckland Transport is a bunch of ideological toss-pots who want to force us out of our cars. I'm the sort of urbanist that gets there's a limit to the number of cars that can use our roads, and when that limit is hit then you have offer choices so we can all get somewhere. I don't reflexively hate cycleways or bus lanes. I comprehend congestion charges and I'm excited for the Central Rail Link and even Light Rail. Mostly because I've seen the good a co-ordinated public transport system has done elsewhere in the world. But AT's 24/7 parking charges change is beyond the pale. Having developed the city centre with apartments, it will inconvenience residents who have been trying to take their cars off the roads by living in town. It's going to cost ratepayers. Either directly, such as the residents who reckon it will cost them $11,000 a year to park their car now. Or by funding a bureaucracy to run resident parking schemes. It's said it will affect hosp

I was surprised that the news that Auckland had inked a deal with the Government over water wasn't the lead story on last night's TV news. I would have thought that John Campbell would have had a deep dive on its repercussions for Auckland and the country. Basically, water and housing are the biggest issues for this country because every single person, business and animal needs water - and we all need a roof over our head. But maybe the kids we call journalists these days have never got water and its reforms. There is a lot about the deal that has not been said. Compared to 3 Waters, it's essentially 2 waters. Watercare deals with drinking water and human waste. Waste is sewage. That's a billion-dollar-a-year operation. But they don't deal with stormwater and drains. That's called sewerage and that's dealt with in Auckland by an entity called Healthy Waters. Now that's a $200 million dollar a year operation. It's not a council controlled operation. It will still be funded by council borrowings. So when people

New Zealand seems to be waking up to an issue I thought would have caused more concern. As part of the bonfire of the public service, the Government seems to be eyeing cuts to our public research and development sector. Principally that means the Callaghan Institute, the Crown agency that employs about 300 people and has been the target of attack, particularly from David Seymour. He sees the agency's work as being a form of corporate welfare, a bugbear of ACT's. Other ministries and departments conduct significant research funded by the taxpayer. The Department of Conservation has developed major techniques and processes that have been adopted around the world. The Primary Industries ministry also funds valuable research, including work into climate change mitigation. It's feared that all this work will be affected as the Government saves costs in the backroom. Last week, Stats NZ revealed that private industry is starting to put their money where their mouth is. The New Zealand business sector has shown a ro

It is fair to say the country is not in a good place right now. Job cuts dominate the headlines. A double-dip recession came true. Inflation is robbing us of our purchasing power. Last week an IPSOS poll found that 60 percent of us think that New Zealand is in decline and 65 percent believe that the economy is rigged to benefit the rich and the powerful. And when people bemoan our situation and wonder how we got here a common response is to blame the Labour Government and the Reserve Bank. A common refrain is Robertson blew all the money so we can't afford to do anything now, even something as important as paying our police more so they don't quit or leave the country. You also hear that Labour caused a debt so large our children and their children will be paying for it for decades to come. So I pricked up my ears last week when Mike Hosking talked to ASB economist Nick Tuffley about inflation and the economy in general. Mike asked him how bad was our economy and he said pretty bad but still nowhere near what

Since we were last together, the collapse of television news and current affairs has continued. And with it, we have been subjected to a lot of highfalutin thinking about the metaphysical and cultural reasons why linear TV is dying. You know - go woke go broke. Or- this is because nobody trusts you, because you're all raving lefties. Meanwhile, Melissa Lee has been asked what she is going to do about it, when it's obvious that there's very little she can do. These are commercial entities that are suffering at the hands of market forces that have been long predicted to hit. Commercial broadcasting and journalism is an easy business model. Inventory control and labour costs. In other words, you can't employ any more people than the money you make from the advertising. Hearing that more than 300 were employed by Newshub was pretty revealing. That's a lot of salaries. For some perspective, NZME employs just over 200 for it's papers and radio and digital content. And the lid has been sinking steadily for a years n

I vividly remember the first time I saw Christchurch Cathedral. I was 10 so it was 1973. I was on tour with the Auckland Boys Choir. It was winter and it was twilight and we went into the Square, which was bustling with cars and buses and Victorian buildings and a marvellous magic shop. People wore overcoats and scarves and there was the cathedral. It as like being transported to England. We went in to listen to the cathedral's boys choir performing Evensong and my choirmaster said they were the best in the land. And they were. I say this after the news that the restoration may be put on hold due to the escalating cost. I can't comprehend stopping something halfway through. It's too late to go back. Forward is the only way to go. To paraphrase the Prime Minister - we have passed through the decision gate and in passing that gate there can only be commitment to finishing the job, even if it seems to be escalating out of control. It's called aspiration. It's called determination. Perhaps this is the lack of amb

I was not going to talk about dolphin-gate- but from first thing this morning, everyone was talking about it. Sir Russell Coutts has had an epic meltdown over the cancellation of Saturday racing of his SailGP series. He had to refund the spectator's tickets, which meant at least a third of his income went up in smoke. Now he's belittling all New Zealand for their bureaucratic torpor that stops go-getters like him getting their way. I would have raced. And if a foiling boat traveling at 80 kilometres an hour ran over a calving dolphin, turning it into sashimi, I could then say we learnt our lesson- and please pass the rice and the wasabi. But I think it's important to realise how we got here. Coutts sailed Lyttleton last year. With dolphin protocols. 1 race-day got delayed. He knew the Lyttleton problem but carried on. This year he decided to race in Auckland. He wanted to build a stadium and hospitality on the site of a former oil and chemical storage site. Auckland said you can't put people and food on poiso

So if you've listened to me for any length of time, you'll know I respect Liam Dann very much indeed. Liam is the Herald's Business Editor at Large. He hosts podcasts and writes stories about the business world and he's been at the NZ Herald for 21 years. He's at pains to stress he's not an economist. He's the guy who interviews economists and then translates their technical stuff into news we can all use and we need. He's just written a book called Barbecue Economics, which explains all this stuff for the average man and woman on the street. He also writes a column every Sunday, and yesterday he asked the question I've been asking myself for a long time. "Is the Government’s shock about this 'worse than expected' economy political theatre or just ignorance?" Last August, Nicola Willis stated the cupboard was bare, and we all knew that. They then campaigned on fixing it all up. Killing inflation. Solving the cost of living crisis. Building the missing infrastructure. And then on top of it all, giving up on $1

When National formed it's new government there was a snappy little phrase that supporters were fond of using. Thank God the adults are back in charge. Suggesting that the left wing Labour Government were naive, inefficient fools who had driven the country into the ground like a 12 year old in a ram raid. National would lead a government run by grown ups who know what to do and how to do it and then actually DO it. So when Christopher Luxon presented his State of the nation address yesterday, the expectation was that the grown ups were about to tell us how all our problems will be fixed. What we got was a warning that times were going to get tough. What we got was a promise that our PM would not shy away from tough talk.  What we got was a lot of talk about beneficiaries. They were told the free ride was over. And then at the end an admission to reporters that the Government was yet to explain how it would address and finance the solutions to our woes. We also got a lot of talk about how bad the last Governmen