Wairoa's getting another funding boost of half-a-million-dollars for recovery from last week's major flooding.

More than 100 properties were badly damaged in a district still recovering from last year's Cyclone Gabrielle.

It brings Mayoral Relief Funding allocated so far to $600 thousand.

Emergency Management Minister Mark Mitchell says it'll go into pressing and immediate needs in the community.

He says it'll ensure ongoing support for clean-up costs such as drying houses and removing damaged materials from homes.

Wairoa Mayor Craig Little told Kerre Woodham that while $500k won’t go far, at the end of the day, the government didn’t create this mess.

He said that this was not a big rain event, and the regional council need to come out and apologise, otherwise they’re going nowhere.

LISTEN ABOVE

Wairoa's getting another funding boost of half-a-million-dollars for recovery from last week's major flooding. 
More than 100 properties were badly damaged in a district still recovering from last year's Cyclone Gabrielle. 
It brings Mayoral Relief Funding allocated so far to $600 thousand. 
Emergency Management Minister Mark Mitchell says it'll go into pressing and immediate needs in the community. 
He says it'll ensure ongoing support for clean-up costs such as drying houses and removing damaged materials from homes. 
Wairoa Mayor Craig Little told Kerre Woodham that while $500k won’t go far, at the end of the day, the government didn’t create this mess. 
He said that this was not a big rain event, and the regional council need to come out and apologise, otherwise they’re going nowhere. 
LISTEN ABOVE

Join Kerre Woodham one of New Zealand’s best loved personalities as she dishes up a bold, sharp and energetic show Monday to Friday 9am-12md on Newstalk ZB. News, opinion, analysis, lifestyle and entertainment – we’ve got your morning listening covered.

Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

Craig Little: Wairoa Mayor on the damage to the town and the recovery funding boost

Two billion dollars was poured into mental health by the previous administration, and it just proves that chucking money at a problem doesn't solve it. The Mental Health Foundation at the time was sceptical that the huge boost in funding would be spent in the right areas. Education about maintaining and boosting mental health and well-being, they said, should be just as important as the services needed when people are in crisis. But the government was more about funding the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. 

So what was the result of that huge investment in mental health? Nearly half a decade later what do we have for that money? Well, as many of you know, it's now harder than ever to see a counsellor or a psychologist, even privately, even if you've got the money to see them privately, you'll be waiting. Workforce shortages continue to cripple existing services and impede the rollout of new ones. When it comes to hospital beds, well, acutely unwell mental health patients will still find themselves in a makeshift bed in a staff room, or on a hospital ward not fit for purpose. Resources are so stretched that children harming or starving themselves are typically only admitted if they've tried to take their own life. It's been like that for some time. In several regions, young people in crisis are having to wait twice as long as they did five years ago to see a specialist mental health service. And that's with $2 billion poured into the sector. 

Meanwhile, research shows the mental health and well-being of New Zealanders has been in decline over the last decade, while the number of adults unable to get help for their mental distress or substance abuse has risen. Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey is hoping to turn that around, (and good luck to him) with five mental health and addiction targets announced yesterday with some funding. And promising that there would be a big focus on prevention and early intervention and that's a focus mental health campaigner Sir John Kirwan supports.



“Look, there's three things that are really, really important for me. You cannot centralise mental health, so it needs to be a community issue. I travel the country, there's some amazing people in the community that are doing great mental health work so we need to finance them. The second thing is we've got to start talking about preventative mental health, how do we stop pushing people off the cliff? And you know, I think what this government has said, if we give 10 million this year and these people come back to us and say this is working in the community, you know, we've got this program that's working. Here's the proof. They're going to extend on that money. So community is where it's at. And if you're out there and you've got these programs in place where you know you're making a difference in mental health, then I would say apply for it. Innovation is the word we need. You know, this is a worldwide problem here, as you know. I mean there there's 800,000 people committed suicide last year, so this is a crisis around the world and our beautiful little country is way up there in the bad stats. So what we've been doing and I don't think this is anyone's fault, what we've been doing is not working so we need to try and attack this differently. So innovation, giving money to the community, then proving back that it works and then giving them more money is definitely what I think we should be doing.”



That was Sir John Kirwan talking to Heather du Plessis Allan last night. So I'd love to hear from those of you who have been trying to get help for a loved one, trying to get help for yourself. What's the wait time? What are the treatments offered to you if you do finally get to see someone. And for those who are initiating community responses, for those who are trying to help out on a local level, I would love to hear from you as well. What are you doing that's different? How are you helping? You know we tried with the gangs to see if it worked putting money with gang members, because they can reach the hard to reach people. I think at best you would say the results were indeterminate from Harry Tam’s programme. But I would very much like to hear from those who have been trying to access support or help for someone they love or for themselves. And I'd love to hear from any initiatives that actually work, they might be little, they might be small, they might be bespoke, but they might be working.

Two billion dollars was poured into mental health by the previous administration, and it just proves that chucking money at a problem doesn't solve it. The Mental Health Foundation at the time was sceptical that the huge boost in funding would be spent in the right areas. Education about maintaining and boosting mental health and well-being, they said, should be just as important as the services needed when people are in crisis. But the government was more about funding the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.  
So what was the result of that huge investment in mental health? Nearly half a decade later what do we have for that money? Well, as many of you know, it's now harder than ever to see a counsellor or a psychologist, even privately, even if you've got the money to see them privately, you'll be waiting. Workforce shortages continue to cripple existing services and impede the rollout of new ones. When it comes to hospital beds, well, acutely unwell mental health patients will still find themselves in a makeshift bed in a staff room, or on a hospital ward not fit for purpose. Resources are so stretched that children harming or starving themselves are typically only admitted if they've tried to take their own life. It's been like that for some time. In several regions, young people in crisis are having to wait twice as long as they did five years ago to see a specialist mental health service. And that's with $2 billion poured into the sector.  
Meanwhile, research shows the mental health and well-being of New Zealanders has been in decline over the last decade, while the number of adults unable to get help for their mental distress or substance abuse has risen. Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey is hoping to turn that around, (and good luck to him) with five mental health and addiction targets announced yesterday with some funding. And promising that there would be a big focus on prevention and early intervention and that's a focus mental health campaigner Sir John Kirwan supports. 
 
“Look, there's three things that are really, really important for me. You cannot centralise mental health, so it needs to be a community issue. I travel the country, there's some amazing people in the community that are doing great mental health work so we need to finance them. The second thing is we've got to start talking about preventative mental health, how do we stop pushing people off the cliff? And you know, I think what this government has said, if we give 10 million this year and these people come back to us and say this is working in the community, you know, we've got this program that's working. Here's the proof. They're going to extend on that money. So community is where it's at. And if you're out there and you've got these programs in place where you know you're making a difference in mental health, then I would say apply for it. Innovation is the word we need. You know, this is a worldwide problem here, as you know. I mean there there's 800,000 people committed suicide last year, so this is a crisis around the world and our beautiful little country is way up there in the bad stats. So what we've been doing and I don't think this is anyone's fault, what we've been doing is not working so we need to try and attack this differently. So innovation, giving money to the community, then proving back that it works and then giving them more money is definitely what I think we should be doing.” 
 
That was Sir John Kirwan talking to Heather du Plessis Allan last night. So I'd love to hear from those of you who have been trying to get help for a loved one, trying to get help for yourself. What's the wait time? What are the treatments offered to you if you do finally get to see someone. And for those who are initiating community responses, for those who are trying to help out on a local level, I would love to hear from you as well. What are you doing that's different? How are you helping? You know we tried with the gangs to see if it worked putting money with gang members, because they can reach the hard to reach people. I think at best you would say the results were indeterminate from Harry Tam’s programme. But I would very much like to hear from those who have been trying to access support or help for someone they love or for themselves. And I'd love to hear from any initiatives that actually work, they might be little, they might be small, they might be bespoke, but they might be working.

Kerre Woodham: What is working in our mental health sector?

The Government will officially announce this morning a plan “to flood the market” with land for development in a bid to end New Zealand's housing crisis. Chris Bishop will use a speech to the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand later this morning, to announce a slew of changes to New Zealand's planning laws.  He wants to flood the market with affordable land to develop and to make it easier and cheaper to develop that land into housing as he told Mike Hosking this morning.



CB: We're going to let cities grow, Mike, it's really important. We've got a housing crisis. We need to allow our cities to grow. We need to get rid of the Auckland metropolitan urban limit. Let Auckland grow out at the fringe, but also do sensible density around transit corridors and around our train stations. More apartments by train stations, more mixed-use zoning, let our cities grow and get on top of this multi-generational problem of housing affordability.

MH: Is this mainly metropolitan? Rural New Zealand, provincial New Zealand doesn't really need to worry about any of this, cause it's not really a problem for them or not?

CB: Yeah, what we call tier one and two cities, so Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch, Hamilton, Tauranga, we're not talking about provincial and, and regional rural councils, you know, they've got growth ambitions as well, but we're really talking about our big cities.  



Excellent. We need more homes. The lack of affordable housing has left a generation feeling locked out of home ownership and the lack of social housing has led to a myriad of social problems. 

But. But. But. There must be protections for future homeowners around the quality of the builds for the community, for all of us who call a city home. Just look around Auckland City if you've visited, if you live here, so many of the apartments chucked up in the 90s are aesthetically abhorrent. They are not fit for purpose. There was no thought put into building them, just chucking them up to basically factory farm people. There must be some rules around what developers can build and how they build. Green spaces, community spaces, homes, just as a basic, that don't leak or have bits drop off into the street. Parkwood Apartments, City Garden Apartments, Victopia, Harbour Oaks, The Pulse, Westmount, St Lukes Gardens, Stonefield villas, that is on the first 2 seconds of a Google search of Auckland apartments that need to be remediated. And the human misery that goes along with sinking your money into a spanking new apartment, only to have it fall around your ears a decade later cannot be overestimated. 

So fine, do quality apartments with community spaces, green spaces, that allow for people to live in them. Not just shelter overnight but to live in them. And to live in them for as long as they want, not have to move out while dangerous buildings are repaired. There has got to be some comeback on the developers. So that is one concern. 

The other is the idea of moving beyond the city limits. I mean, Auckland is a great sprawling metropolis anyway, it's just about at Hamilton already. Wellington, the geography sort of precludes you from sprawling, but you're certainly inching your way out there. Urban areas expanded by 15% from 1996 to 2018, with 83% of that land converted from farmland. The area of highly productive land lost to housing increased by 54% between 2002 and 2019. And market pressures (this is a story from 2021) will increase with more demand as the population grows here and overseas. Only about 15% of land is flat with good soil and climate, that makes it ideal for food production, which means it needs lesser irrigation and fertilizers. The Ministry for the Environment said if productive land was not available for agriculture, it forced less suitable areas to be used, requiring more fertilizer and more irrigation, which could then hurt the wider environment. 

I am absolutely not against building more homes, building more apartments, building more houses, we have to, there's no two ways about it, but we have to do it properly. We have to recognise that if we don't do it well, all we're doing is taping up a problem in the short term, while creating a much, much bigger problem down the line. And I think future generations will have more than enough to deal with, without us giving them even more problems.

The Government will officially announce this morning a plan “to flood the market” with land for development in a bid to end New Zealand's housing crisis. Chris Bishop will use a speech to the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand later this morning, to announce a slew of changes to New Zealand's planning laws.  He wants to flood the market with affordable land to develop and to make it easier and cheaper to develop that land into housing as he told Mike Hosking this morning. 
 
CB: We're going to let cities grow, Mike, it's really important. We've got a housing crisis. We need to allow our cities to grow. We need to get rid of the Auckland metropolitan urban limit. Let Auckland grow out at the fringe, but also do sensible density around transit corridors and around our train stations. More apartments by train stations, more mixed-use zoning, let our cities grow and get on top of this multi-generational problem of housing affordability. 
MH: Is this mainly metropolitan? Rural New Zealand, provincial New Zealand doesn't really need to worry about any of this, cause it's not really a problem for them or not? 
CB: Yeah, what we call tier one and two cities, so Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch, Hamilton, Tauranga, we're not talking about provincial and, and regional rural councils, you know, they've got growth ambitions as well, but we're really talking about our big cities.   
 
Excellent. We need more homes. The lack of affordable housing has left a generation feeling locked out of home ownership and the lack of social housing has led to a myriad of social problems.  
But. But. But. There must be protections for future homeowners around the quality of the builds for the community, for all of us who call a city home. Just look around Auckland City if you've visited, if you live here, so many of the apartments chucked up in the 90s are aesthetically abhorrent. They are not fit for purpose. There was no thought put into building them, just chucking them up to basically factory farm people. There must be some rules around what developers can build and how they build. Green spaces, community spaces, homes, just as a basic, that don't leak or have bits drop off into the street. Parkwood Apartments, City Garden Apartments, Victopia, Harbour Oaks, The Pulse, Westmount, St Lukes Gardens, Stonefield villas, that is on the first 2 seconds of a Google search of Auckland apartments that need to be remediated. And the human misery that goes along with sinking your money into a spanking new apartment, only to have it fall around your ears a decade later cannot be overestimated.  
So fine, do quality apartments with community spaces, green spaces, that allow for people to live in them. Not just shelter overnight but to live in them. And to live in them for as long as they want, not have to move out while dangerous buildings are repaired. There has got to be some comeback on the developers. So that is one concern.  
The other is the idea of moving beyond the city limits. I mean, Auckland is a great sprawling metropolis anyway, it's just about at Hamilton already. Wellington, the geography sort of precludes you from sprawling, but you're certainly inching your way out there. Urban areas expanded by 15% from 1996 to 2018, with 83% of that land converted from farmland. The area of highly productive land lost to housing increased by 54% between 2002 and 2019. And market pressures (this is a story from 2021) will increase with more demand as the population grows here and overseas. Only about 15% of land is flat with good soil and climate, that makes it ideal for food production, which means it needs lesser irrigation and fertilizers. The Ministry for the Environment said if productive land was not available for agriculture, it forced less suitable areas to be used, requiring more fertilizer and more irrigation, which could then hurt the wider environment.  
I am absolutely not against building more homes, building more apartments, building more houses, we have to, there's no two ways about it, but we have to do it properly. We have to recognise that if we don't do it well, all we're doing is taping up a problem in the short term, while creating a much, much bigger problem down the line. And I think future generations will have more than enough to deal with, without us giving them even more problems.

Kerre Woodham: We need more homes but we need to do it properly

Christopher Luxon joined Kerre Woodham for an hour of talkback, taking questions from listeners and delving into their plans for the upcoming months.

The Prime Minister says our housing development has been running like it's 1975. 

The Housing Minister is today announcing planning changes agreed by Cabinet in an effort to address the housing crisis.

It will reform council powers on urban boundaries, liberalise planning, and require councils to plan for 30-years of growth.

Christopher Luxon told Kerre Woodham that he recently opened a great build-to rent-development in Auckland's Sylvia Park. 

He says we've ended up in a crisis because we haven't evolved laws to unlock those kinds of developments, or to encourage investment in build to rent programmes.

With politics heating up all over the world, Luxon is keeping his thoughts about major overseas elections to himself. 

Democrat US President Joe Biden and former Republican President Donald Trump are facing off again on the 2024 election campaign trail. 

Meanwhile, people vote today in the UK on whether to support Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's Conservatives or flip to Labour and Keir Starmer. 

Luxon told Kerre he can work with either Biden or Trump. 

He says it's his job to advance New Zealand's interests, and he will do the same in the UK with Sunak or Starmer.

LISTEN ABOVE

Christopher Luxon joined Kerre Woodham for an hour of talkback, taking questions from listeners and delving into their plans for the upcoming months. 
The Prime Minister says our housing development has been running like it's 1975.  
The Housing Minister is today announcing planning changes agreed by Cabinet in an effort to address the housing crisis. 
It will reform council powers on urban boundaries, liberalise planning, and require councils to plan for 30-years of growth. 
Christopher Luxon told Kerre Woodham that he recently opened a great build-to rent-development in Auckland's Sylvia Park.  
He says we've ended up in a crisis because we haven't evolved laws to unlock those kinds of developments, or to encourage investment in build to rent programmes. 
With politics heating up all over the world, Luxon is keeping his thoughts about major overseas elections to himself.  
Democrat US President Joe Biden and former Republican President Donald Trump are facing off again on the 2024 election campaign trail.  
Meanwhile, people vote today in the UK on whether to support Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's Conservatives or flip to Labour and Keir Starmer.  
Luxon told Kerre he can work with either Biden or Trump.  
He says it's his job to advance New Zealand's interests, and he will do the same in the UK with Sunak or Starmer. 
LISTEN ABOVE

Craig Little: Wairoa Mayor on the damage to the town and the recovery funding boost

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