A report by the Ministerial Advisory Group reviewing English and maths learning, has recommended annual checkpoint tests for students.

It recommends children in Years 4-6 learn handwriting, including cursive handwriting, and study the "conventions of text structure and style".

Children would also be encouraged to write by hand as much as possible in their first three years at school.

The Write Lesson managing director Belinda Blick-Duggan says more schools have turned their back on teaching handwriting than ever.

"Something like handwriting can be so settling and consistent - and actually a really good routine for a lot of those children."

LISTEN ABOVE

A report by the Ministerial Advisory Group reviewing English and maths learning, has recommended annual checkpoint tests for students.
It recommends children in Years 4-6 learn handwriting, including cursive handwriting, and study the "conventions of text structure and style".
Children would also be encouraged to write by hand as much as possible in their first three years at school.
The Write Lesson managing director Belinda Blick-Duggan says more schools have turned their back on teaching handwriting than ever.
"Something like handwriting can be so settling and consistent - and actually a really good routine for a lot of those children."
LISTEN ABOVE

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Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

Belinda Blick-Duggan: The Write Lesson managing director on the new educational report calling for 'checkpoint tests' in English and maths

A second Covid inquiry has been announced. And while that may sound like two Covid inquiries too many, this one may well get the answer a lot of us are looking for. New Zealand First has invoked the Agree to Disagree clause that allows a party within a coalition government to disagree in relation to issues on which the parties wish to maintain a different position in public. Generally, in a coalition agreement you like to present a united front, but when there are real disagreements, the clause can be invoked and that is what Peters has done. 

He wanted the first inquiry scrapped, saying it was nothing more than a political tool being used to craft a message through its limited scope and the lack of suitability of the Commissioners. The chair is epidemiologist Professor Tony Blakely, who advised during the pandemic, the economist John Whitehead, and former National MP Hekia Parata. He's not wrong, though. Unlike most other recent Royal Commissions, New Zealand's focus is explicitly on planning for the next pandemic, rather than assigning blame for any failings from the decision makers. It's like oh well, that happened, let's look ahead and see what we can do next time around. Its full name is “New Zealand Royal Commission Covid -19 Lessons Learned”, and the parliamentary order bringing it into being describes its intentions as examining the lessons learned from Aotearoa New Zealand's response to Covid-19 that should be applied in preparation for any future pandemic. 

So there would be no blame, no finger pointing, no public floggings in the public square. Really, it would be more like a series of patsy questions in Parliament. Did you do well? [Previous Labour government]. Thank you. Just how well did you think you did? [Previous Labour government]. What learnings do you think you can take forward? How many lives were saved? [Labour government]. You know, that sort of thing. 

Now Brooke van Velden, Internal Affairs Minister, says that when this inquiry finishes its work a second one will get under way and this one will ask the hard questions.



“Where I think people are looking for more focus and what Phase Two will focus on, are things like the government's response and how that was weighed up against education, health, business, inflation. What its response did to debt and business activity? The social division that was caused in our society, and importantly also touches on New Zealand First’s commitment where they wish to look into vaccine efficacy. So it's a bit broader in range and I think answers a lot of those questions that will be on the top of people's minds. Was the government too fixated on just one aspect of its response?”



And I think that's a reasonable question. That was Brooke van Velden talking to Mike Hosking this morning. I think those are really relevant questions. The vaccine efficacy and safety, the extended lockdowns in Auckland, in Northland. Now that we have the luxury of hindsight, you have to look and say, okay was that worth it? Was having borders at the Bombay Hills worth it? 

I'd be really interested to know whether there's any explanation for ‘the computer says no’ letters that so many families were given when they couldn't be with loved ones who were very, very ill or dying. Despite the fact that they were vaccinated, the family they were going to were vaccinated, there was just a simple computer say no denial from MBIE, a nameless official at MBIE, saying they could not be with a dying family member, or somebody who was very, very ill. And the pain that that caused was immeasurable. The grief that that generated was immeasurable. So I'd really love to know how you made the decision and who these faceless, nameless people were at MBIE who just deny, deny, denied access across the border, which all sounds incredibly weird. 

You know, I think you have to ask those questions before you can move forward. I don't know that it's going to resolve anything. I mean basically I'd be quite happy with stocks in the public square, quite frankly. But then there are others who will be not satisfied until anybody who dared to so much as criticise any of the decisions made, abases themselves before the likes of Ardern, and Hipkins, and Robertson, and all the public health officials and kisses the hem of their garment and repeats three times, I am so sorry. I am so grateful to be alive and it's only thanks to you. I am so sorry. I'm so grateful to be alive. And it's only thanks to you, which I think is tosh. 

I do think the hard questions have to be asked this first patsy inquiry was precisely that. How well did you do Labour government? Ooh very well. Really. Just how well? Exceptionally well. Any learnings? Oh, a few. You have to be able to weigh the costs. You have to be able to weigh the different decisions that were made that had so many impacts on so many different people's lives. Some breezed through, loved it, thought it was amazing, thought every decision made was the right one, but not everybody did. And I think we're going to see the damage for a very long time to come. As I've always said, it'll be 100 years from now, there'll still be people debating whether that second year of decision making they were making the right decisions. But it would be good to start now, to ask a few tough questions now, rather than just sugar coating the response, which is all we'd have got from the first inquiry.

A second Covid inquiry has been announced. And while that may sound like two Covid inquiries too many, this one may well get the answer a lot of us are looking for. New Zealand First has invoked the Agree to Disagree clause that allows a party within a coalition government to disagree in relation to issues on which the parties wish to maintain a different position in public. Generally, in a coalition agreement you like to present a united front, but when there are real disagreements, the clause can be invoked and that is what Peters has done.  
He wanted the first inquiry scrapped, saying it was nothing more than a political tool being used to craft a message through its limited scope and the lack of suitability of the Commissioners. The chair is epidemiologist Professor Tony Blakely, who advised during the pandemic, the economist John Whitehead, and former National MP Hekia Parata. He's not wrong, though. Unlike most other recent Royal Commissions, New Zealand's focus is explicitly on planning for the next pandemic, rather than assigning blame for any failings from the decision makers. It's like oh well, that happened, let's look ahead and see what we can do next time around. Its full name is “New Zealand Royal Commission Covid -19 Lessons Learned”, and the parliamentary order bringing it into being describes its intentions as examining the lessons learned from Aotearoa New Zealand's response to Covid-19 that should be applied in preparation for any future pandemic.  
So there would be no blame, no finger pointing, no public floggings in the public square. Really, it would be more like a series of patsy questions in Parliament. Did you do well? [Previous Labour government]. Thank you. Just how well did you think you did? [Previous Labour government]. What learnings do you think you can take forward? How many lives were saved? [Labour government]. You know, that sort of thing.  
Now Brooke van Velden, Internal Affairs Minister, says that when this inquiry finishes its work a second one will get under way and this one will ask the hard questions. 
 
“Where I think people are looking for more focus and what Phase Two will focus on, are things like the government's response and how that was weighed up against education, health, business, inflation. What its response did to debt and business activity? The social division that was caused in our society, and importantly also touches on New Zealand First’s commitment where they wish to look into vaccine efficacy. So it's a bit broader in range and I think answers a lot of those questions that will be on the top of people's minds. Was the government too fixated on just one aspect of its response?” 
 
And I think that's a reasonable question. That was Brooke van Velden talking to Mike Hosking this morning. I think those are really relevant questions. The vaccine efficacy and safety, the extended lockdowns in Auckland, in Northland. Now that we have the luxury of hindsight, you have to look and say, okay was that worth it? Was having borders at the Bombay Hills worth it?  
I'd be really interested to know whether there's any explanation for ‘the computer says no’ letters that so many families were given when they couldn't be with loved ones who were very, very ill or dying. Despite the fact that they were vaccinated, the family they were going to were vaccinated, there was just a simple computer say no denial from MBIE, a nameless official at MBIE, saying they could not be with a dying family member, or somebody who was very, very ill. And the pain that that caused was immeasurable. The grief that that generated was immeasurable. So I'd really love to know how you made the decision and who these faceless, nameless people were at MBIE who just deny, deny, denied access across the border, which all sounds incredibly weird.  
You know, I think you have to ask those questions before you can move forward. I don't know that it's going to resolve anything. I mean basically I'd be quite happy with stocks in the public square, quite frankly. But then there are others who will be not satisfied until anybody who dared to so much as criticise any of the decisions made, abases themselves before the likes of Ardern, and Hipkins, and Robertson, and all the public health officials and kisses the hem of their garment and repeats three times, I am so sorry. I am so grateful to be alive and it's only thanks to you. I am so sorry. I'm so grateful to be alive. And it's only thanks to you, which I think is tosh.  
I do think the hard questions have to be asked this first patsy inquiry was precisely that. How well did you do Labour government? Ooh very well. Really. Just how well? Exceptionally well. Any learnings? Oh, a few. You have to be able to weigh the costs. You have to be able to weigh the different decisions that were made that had so many impacts on so many different people's lives. Some breezed through, loved it, thought it was amazing, thought every decision made was the right one, but not everybody did. And I think we're going to see the damage for a very long time to come. As I've always said, it'll be 100 years from now, there'll still be people debating whether that second year of decision making they were making the right decisions. But it would be good to start now, to ask a few tough questions now, rather than just sugar coating the response, which is all we'd have got from the first inquiry.

Kerre Woodham: The hard questions about Covid need to be asked

Why shoplift something you can afford?

Not every shoplifter is doing it out of economic necessity, some thieves taking despite having a high income, status, and a steady career. 

After ex-Green Party MP Golriz Ghahraman pleaded guilty to four shoplifting charges today, the question of why an affluent person would commit retail theft is again being raised.

Dr Dougal Sutherland, a clinical psychologist with Umbrella Wellbeing, told Kerre Woodham that psychological pressures and stress can be behind the decision to shoplift. 

He said that when people come under pressure they can come up with what, in hindsight, are quite irrational ways of getting out of a situation via self-sabotage.

LISTEN ABOVE

Why shoplift something you can afford? 
Not every shoplifter is doing it out of economic necessity, some thieves taking despite having a high income, status, and a steady career.  
After ex-Green Party MP Golriz Ghahraman pleaded guilty to four shoplifting charges today, the question of why an affluent person would commit retail theft is again being raised. 
Dr Dougal Sutherland, a clinical psychologist with Umbrella Wellbeing, told Kerre Woodham that psychological pressures and stress can be behind the decision to shoplift.  
He said that when people come under pressure they can come up with what, in hindsight, are quite irrational ways of getting out of a situation via self-sabotage. 
LISTEN ABOVE

Dougal Sutherland: Umbrella Wellbeing Clinical Psychologist on why affluent people shoplift

They promised they would. They said it would happen. I have to say it happened far sooner than I expected. Yesterday's post-Cabinet press conference saw Christopher Luxon, Shane Reti et al. announcing up to 26 new cancer treatments, alongside 28 other medicines to be funded as part of the government's $604 million health budget to honour National’s pre-election promise. The promise was made good on with knobs on. Some of the drugs will be available from October/November of this year. Others will be phased in as of next year and it is fantastic news. 

I don't want to be a Debbie Downer, but it will be too late for some families. And as medical oncologist Chris Jackson, cancer expert extraordinaire, said on the Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning, having the drugs available and funded is all very well and good but we need to ensure our infrastructure can deliver them. 

“We've never had any investment of this extent in the entirety of Pharmac’s history. I mean $600 million is a very, very, very big number and we have never had this many cancer drugs funded at once at any time. So despite the way we got here, I'm absolutely and utterly thrilled. There are still quite a few fishhooks though. You know, when you dump 26 cancer medicines into the system at once, the largest ever, you do create a bit of a capacity demand issue, and the cancer services are already pretty tight and there's a number of services around the country which have already got waiting lists in place. And so if we don't fund the infrastructure for them, the chemo units, the nurses and the like, then you can end up with cancer waiting lists in six to 12 months time. So we've got to be careful about how we do this.”

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. It is interesting how the coalition government resolved the issue of how they would get the cancer drugs to the New Zealanders they'd promised them to. They could either direct Pharmac to buy the drugs, and that's a whole can of worms. David Seymour, whose Pharmac’s Minister and National’s coalition partner was very reluctant to interfere with the decisions of Pharmac. He said as much on this show a couple of weeks ago. So he didn't want that kind of interference, ‘You must buy those drugs with this money’, and rightly so I think. 

Or you could set up a separate cancer drug buying agency that would have taken time and bureaucracy and faff. So, in the end the government had to fork out a whole lot more than they originally promised because Pharmac has a list of priority drugs it wants to fund, it only has so much money, and it must buy the drugs that will bring the greatest good to the most amount of people. Ultimately, there are other ways of doing it, but there are other considerations, but primarily that's what it must do. Look for the best deal on the best drugs that will deliver to the most amount of people. So they have a priority list, and some of those cancer drugs were in that priority list, but they were behind other drugs that weren’t for cancer. So Pharmac said all right, fine, we'll buy the drugs, but you have to give us the money that will allow us to get to their place on the list, if you see what I mean. To get to all the cancer drugs they promised they had to buy a whole lot of other drugs. So that means about 28 medicines that were not for cancer will now also be funded because they were ahead of those cancer drugs on the priority list. I think even though it's expensive, that is the right thing to do. You cannot, cannot, cannot politicise the Pharmac buying priority list, you just can't. As Chris Jackson said to Mike Hosking this morning, Pharmac may not be perfect, but it is the best option. 

“The last thing you want is pollies picking drugs. You certainly don't want Big Pharma getting large blank checks from the state, and you don't want those who tell the biggest story through the media to queue jump. What we've had here is by lifting up Pharmac’s budget, you've had, cancer hasn't queue jumped all the other medications. There’s been 26 drugs, 50 total so other areas have benefited too. It's cost them an awful lot of money because of the political problem they've created. It would have been cheaper to do it another way, but I'm really, really pleased how we've landed.  We need to make sure the implementation's done well now, because if it's not, we're going to create another problem, just down the line.”

Yeah, absolutely. And that's what he was saying. All very well and good to get the drugs but you need to have the infrastructure so they can get to the people who need them. So I would love to hear from you on this one. Is this the best solution? I think it is. It is expensive, of course it's expensive. But you can't prioritise drugs just because you've got somebody fashionable and trendy who it can promote their drug over others. They get more media attention than others. There are less sexy diseases, less sexy drugs that don't get the attention, but the people who have the disease need it. The people who have the affliction need that particular drug, and why should they be further down the list simply because they can't get the right noise behind lobbying? It's got to be independent. It's got to be free of government interference and if it means that more people will have their drugs funded, well so well and good. There are a lot of these people who need the drugs have not brought this upon themselves. You know, it's just a roll of the dice. It is fate. That means they end up with a life-changing or life-threatening disease or illness that a drug can alleviate. They can't afford that drug, they die. They can't afford that drug. They live a life of perpetual misery. Surely this has got to be good news.

They promised they would. They said it would happen. I have to say it happened far sooner than I expected. Yesterday's post-Cabinet press conference saw Christopher Luxon, Shane Reti et al. announcing up to 26 new cancer treatments, alongside 28 other medicines to be funded as part of the government's $604 million health budget to honour National’s pre-election promise. The promise was made good on with knobs on. Some of the drugs will be available from October/November of this year. Others will be phased in as of next year and it is fantastic news.  
I don't want to be a Debbie Downer, but it will be too late for some families. And as medical oncologist Chris Jackson, cancer expert extraordinaire, said on the Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning, having the drugs available and funded is all very well and good but we need to ensure our infrastructure can deliver them.  
“We've never had any investment of this extent in the entirety of Pharmac’s history. I mean $600 million is a very, very, very big number and we have never had this many cancer drugs funded at once at any time. So despite the way we got here, I'm absolutely and utterly thrilled. There are still quite a few fishhooks though. You know, when you dump 26 cancer medicines into the system at once, the largest ever, you do create a bit of a capacity demand issue, and the cancer services are already pretty tight and there's a number of services around the country which have already got waiting lists in place. And so if we don't fund the infrastructure for them, the chemo units, the nurses and the like, then you can end up with cancer waiting lists in six to 12 months time. So we've got to be careful about how we do this.” 
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. It is interesting how the coalition government resolved the issue of how they would get the cancer drugs to the New Zealanders they'd promised them to. They could either direct Pharmac to buy the drugs, and that's a whole can of worms. David Seymour, whose Pharmac’s Minister and National’s coalition partner was very reluctant to interfere with the decisions of Pharmac. He said as much on this show a couple of weeks ago. So he didn't want that kind of interference, ‘You must buy those drugs with this money’, and rightly so I think.  
Or you could set up a separate cancer drug buying agency that would have taken time and bureaucracy and faff. So, in the end the government had to fork out a whole lot more than they originally promised because Pharmac has a list of priority drugs it wants to fund, it only has so much money, and it must buy the drugs that will bring the greatest good to the most amount of people. Ultimately, there are other ways of doing it, but there are other considerations, but primarily that's what it must do. Look for the best deal on the best drugs that will deliver to the most amount of people. So they have a priority list, and some of those cancer drugs were in that priority list, but they were behind other drugs that weren’t for cancer. So Pharmac said all right, fine, we'll buy the drugs, but you have to give us the money that will allow us to get to their place on the list, if you see what I mean. To get to all the cancer drugs they promised they had to buy a whole lot of other drugs. So that means about 28 medicines that were not for cancer will now also be funded because they were ahead of those cancer drugs on the priority list. I think even though it's expensive, that is the right thing to do. You cannot, cannot, cannot politicise the Pharmac buying priority list, you just can't. As Chris Jackson said to Mike Hosking this morning, Pharmac may not be perfect, but it is the best option.  
“The last thing you want is pollies picking drugs. You certainly don't want Big Pharma getting large blank checks from the state, and you don't want those who tell the biggest story through the media to queue jump. What we've had here is by lifting up Pharmac’s budget, you've had, cancer hasn't queue jumped all the other medications. There’s been 26 drugs, 50 total so other areas have benefited too. It's cost them an awful lot of money because of the political problem they've created. It would have been cheaper to do it another way, but I'm really, really pleased how we've landed.  We need to make sure the implementation's done well now, because if it's not, we're going to create another problem, just down the line.” 
Yeah, absolutely. And that's what he was saying. All very well and good to get the drugs but you need to have the infrastructure so they can get to the people who need them. So I would love to hear from you on this one. Is this the best solution? I think it is. It is expensive, of course it's expensive. But you can't prioritise drugs just because you've got somebody fashionable and trendy who it can promote their drug over others. They get more media attention than others. There are less sexy diseases, less sexy drugs that don't get the attention, but the people who have the disease need it. The people who have the affliction need that particular drug, and why should they be further down the list simply because they can't get the right noise behind lobbying? It's got to be independent. It's got to be free of government interference and if it means that more people will have their drugs funded, well so well and good. There are a lot of these people who need the drugs have not brought this upon themselves. You know, it's just a roll of the dice. It is fate. That means they end up with a life-changing or life-threatening disease or illness that a drug can alleviate. They can't afford that drug, they die. They can't afford that drug. They live a life of perpetual misery. Surely this has got to be good news.

Belinda Blick-Duggan: The Write Lesson managing director on the new educational report calling for 'checkpoint tests' in English and maths

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