A storm system creeping towards New Zealand has similarities to Cyclone Gita, which hit several years ago.

Cyclone Gabrielle is now sitting off Queensland's coast in the Coral Sea, and is on track to hit the North Island at the end of this week.

WeatherWatch’s Philip Duncan joined Kerre Woodham.

LISTEN ABOVE

A storm system creeping towards New Zealand has similarities to Cyclone Gita, which hit several years ago.
Cyclone Gabrielle is now sitting off Queensland's coast in the Coral Sea, and is on track to hit the North Island at the end of this week.
WeatherWatch’s Philip Duncan joined Kerre Woodham.
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

Philip Duncan: Weather analyst has a warning ahead of Cyclone Gabrielle's arrival

I was listening to the podcast ‘The Rest is Politics’ last night. The speakers were saying that Trump's inclination to invade countries at will, will almost certainly result in nuclear proliferation and will drive countries to find protection in the shadow of Russia and China. The thinking being, what will stop the big orange guy from invading me? Nuclear warheads. Or a mate as big as he is. And then what do you know, a couple of hours later President Macron announced that France is to boost its nuclear arsenal and extend the deterrent to cover other European countries. It's a major development of its nuclear defence policy. The next 50 years, he said, will be an era of nuclear weapons. He said eight other European countries, the UK, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Sweden, and Denmark had agreed to participate in a new advanced deterrent strategy. The aim, he said, is to convince potential adversaries that if they have the audacity to attack France, there will be an unsustainable price to be paid. 

Anyway, back to the future we go. Remember MAD magazine, the American satirical magazine? It was huge in the 60s and 70s and took its name from mutually assured destruction. Sure, press the button, but if you press the button, I press the button and we both go. The catchphrase for MAD magazine was “What, me worry?" And yep, we're back there. You just watch those Golden Visas fly off the shelf as wealthy Americans and Europeans look for a safe haven. Our isolation can work to our advantage.  

At the moment, when it comes to nuclear weapons, nuclear warheads, there are nine countries that have them. Russia has around 5,500, the US just over 5,000, China 600 – they're rapidly expanding their stockpile. France has 290 stable and mostly sea based as of yesterday, but today it'll be a different story. The UK 225, India 180, they're increasing their stockpile, Pakistan 170, increasing their stockpile. Israel has kept shtum about how many it has, and North Korea, who would know? But experts say they're actively testing and expanding. You've also got countries that host nuclear weapons: Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey host US and NATO weapons. Belarus has Russian tactical nuclear weapons. 

So, 50 years of nuclear weaponry Macron is predicting, where mutually assured destruction is the only thing stopping people from pressing the button. It happened before and we got through it. And it does, I mean, you would have to have a death wish for yourself and your people and your country. But are there any guarantees on human behaviour these days? Given our isolation, will that work to our advantage? Hopefully, to a certain extent. We don't have anything of major military strategic importance. No minerals that you can only find here that can be used to make a super bomb, and then we should be relatively safe.  

As of late February this year, the Active Investor Plus, the Golden Visa program, has seen 573 applications received, 196 applications approved, and you can imagine that that will increase. Coming back to The Rest is Politics’ theory that as a result of America going into Venezuela and attacking Iran, that will see smaller countries looking to buy nuclear weapons to keep themselves safe or looking to cosy up to Russia and China. That theory is all well and good, but we should remember that having nuclear weapons didn't stop the US from attacking Iran. They just neutralised the nukes before they went in. And having Russia as your mate, “don't attack me, I've got Russia in my corner," is all very well and good, but as Syria's Bashar al Assad and Venezuela's Maduro and now the mullahs in Iran have found, Russia right now is all talk and no trousers. It can do a great line in rhetoric and they've given their friends a lot of verbal support, which will be pretty cold comfort, but when it comes to on the ground troops and military resources to go in and back up their mates, they're all tied up in Ukraine right now and Russia won't want to commit to wars on two fronts in two different zones.  

So, mutually assured destruction, the threat of one keeping someone pressing the button keeping you from pressing yours, worked before. Tensions eased and there was a relative period of peace. Can you see the same thing happening again? Tensions will rise, tensions will get high, people will get very nervous, and then we can all relax. Do you see New Zealand's isolation as its best defence?

I was listening to the podcast ‘The Rest is Politics’ last night. The speakers were saying that Trump's inclination to invade countries at will, will almost certainly result in nuclear proliferation and will drive countries to find protection in the shadow of Russia and China. The thinking being, what will stop the big orange guy from invading me? Nuclear warheads. Or a mate as big as he is. And then what do you know, a couple of hours later President Macron announced that France is to boost its nuclear arsenal and extend the deterrent to cover other European countries. It's a major development of its nuclear defence policy. The next 50 years, he said, will be an era of nuclear weapons. He said eight other European countries, the UK, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Sweden, and Denmark had agreed to participate in a new advanced deterrent strategy. The aim, he said, is to convince potential adversaries that if they have the audacity to attack France, there will be an unsustainable price to be paid.&nbsp;
Anyway, back to the future we go. Remember MAD magazine, the American satirical magazine? It was huge in the 60s and 70s and took its name from mutually assured destruction. Sure, press the button, but if you press the button, I press the button and we both go. The catchphrase for MAD magazine was “What, me worry?" And yep, we're back there. You just watch those Golden Visas fly off the shelf as wealthy Americans and Europeans look for a safe haven. Our isolation can work to our advantage. &nbsp;
At the moment, when it comes to nuclear weapons, nuclear warheads, there are nine countries that have them. Russia has around 5,500, the US just over 5,000, China 600 – they're rapidly expanding their stockpile. France has 290 stable and mostly sea based as of yesterday, but today it'll be a different story. The UK 225, India 180, they're increasing their stockpile, Pakistan 170, increasing their stockpile. Israel has kept shtum about how many it has, and North Korea, who would know? But experts say they're actively testing and expanding. You've also got countries that host nuclear weapons: Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey host US and NATO weapons. Belarus has Russian tactical nuclear weapons.&nbsp;
So, 50 years of nuclear weaponry Macron is predicting, where mutually assured destruction is the only thing stopping people from pressing the button. It happened before and we got through it. And it does, I mean, you would have to have a death wish for yourself and your people and your country. But are there any guarantees on human behaviour these days? Given our isolation, will that work to our advantage? Hopefully, to a certain extent. We don't have anything of major military strategic importance. No minerals that you can only find here that can be used to make a super bomb, and then we should be relatively safe. &nbsp;
As of late February this year, the Active Investor Plus, the Golden Visa program, has seen 573 applications received, 196 applications approved, and you can imagine that that will increase. Coming back to The Rest is Politics’ theory that as a result of America going into Venezuela and attacking Iran, that will see smaller countries looking to buy nuclear weapons to keep themselves safe or looking to cosy up to Russia and China. That theory is all well and good, but we should remember that having nuclear weapons didn't stop the US from attacking Iran. They just neutralised the nukes before they went in. And having Russia as your mate, “don't attack me, I've got Russia in my corner," is all very well and good, but as Syria's Bashar al Assad and Venezuela's Maduro and now the mullahs in Iran have found, Russia right now is all talk and no trousers. It can do a great line in rhetoric and they've given their friends a lot of verbal support, which will be pretty cold comfort, but when it comes to on the ground troops and military resources to go in and back up their mates, they're all tied up in Ukraine right now and Russia won't want to commit to wars on two fronts in two different zones. &nbsp;
So, mutually assured destruction, the threat of one keeping someone pressing the button keeping you from pressing yours, worked before. Tensions eased and there was a relative period of peace. Can you see the same thing happening again? Tensions will rise, tensions will get high, people will get very nervous, and then we can all relax. Do you see New Zealand's isolation as its best defence?

Kerre Woodham: Mutually assured destruction - will it work again?

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/7784f840-c291-422a-924b-ad9000bbad71/clips/2a2bdbc3-ae08-440c-aa80-b4020001047a/transcript

Golfer Daniel Hillier's won the New Zealand Open by two strokes at Millbrook, eight days after getting married.

The 27-year-old finished at  22-under overall after a final round four-under par 67, marking the first time a Kiwi has won the tournament since 2017.

Hillier told Kerre Woodham that the crowds were among the best he's played in front of.

LISTEN ABOVE

Golfer Daniel Hillier's won the New Zealand Open by two strokes at Millbrook, eight days after getting married.
The 27-year-old finished at &nbsp;22-under overall after a final round four-under par 67, marking the first time a Kiwi has won the tournament since 2017.
Hillier told Kerre Woodham that the crowds were among the best he's played in front of.
LISTEN ABOVE

Daniel Hillier: Kiwi golfer wins the NZ Open days after getting married

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/7784f840-c291-422a-924b-ad9000bbad71/clips/60eaa207-78b5-47a9-b41a-b400017ddbc5/transcript

When it comes to telling stories about what I did in my weekend, I thought I had a pretty good one, but Donald Trump takes the cake. Bombing the hell out of Iran and taking out the Ayatollah Khamenei and other key members of the ruling theocracy surely trumps what most of us did.

As you will know by now, the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran beginning Saturday. There were talks going on between Washington and Tehran over Iran's nuclear programme, or what remains of it. But the US and Israel decided the talk was going nowhere, and so on Saturday the strikes began.

Iran responded to the attacks with missile and air strikes across the region, including in Israel, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq, creating havoc across the Middle East. Hundreds have been killed, the majority in Iran. Despite that, that's nowhere near as many have been killed Iranians as have been killed by their own government's agents in the form of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard.

Donald Trump says the operation is ahead of schedule. Commentators have said it's difficult to know what will happen next in Iran, what the outcome of taking out the top tier of Iran's rulers will bring about. But it's difficult to know what President Trump's endgame is too. We don't know what's going to happen next with him, as Middle East correspondent at The Economist and political author Gregg Carlstrom said this morning on the Mike Hosking Breakfast.

We've heard wildly different stories from Donald Trump about what he's trying to achieve here. His video message announcing the the war on Saturday morning suggested that the aim was regime change, that he wanted Iranians to come out into the streets and overthrow the government and take control in Iran. But then in an interview with The Atlantic magazine that was published just about an hour ago, he said that the Iranians want to talk, and so he's going to talk to them. 

Maybe there's a diplomatic deal that he can make with this regime that just a day ago he was suggesting to overthrow. So I think it's hard to assess whether this is, you know, successful or not from the American perspective because it's not entirely clear what the Americans want.

Indeed, or what will happen next. It's an ongoing situation. There is apparently a complex but clear process to select a successor to Iran's Supreme Leader, who was also the Commander in Chief. In line with Iran's constitution, a three member interim leadership council is now in charge. They will rule until the body tasked with selecting the top cleric, the Assembly of Experts, completes its work. They can choose an individual or they can choose a leadership council.

Trump just a few hours ago told a reporter from The Atlantic that the country's new leadership, so it would be this interim leadership council, wants to talk with him. He plans to do that. He said they want to talk, I've agreed to talk, so I'll be talking to them. They should have done it sooner. They should have given what was very practical and easy to do sooner. They waited too long. There is no great love amongst the people of Iran for the current regime.

There are reports of Iranian citizens rejoicing in the streets in the midst of the strikes, ecstatic that the Ayatollah is gone. And you can understand why, as I referenced, since the beginning of the 25 26 Iranian protests, there have been widespread massacres of civilians at the behest of the Iranian government. According to the Iranian government, oh, we've only killed 3,117 which is a hell of a lot more than the combined US Israeli air strikes. The people themselves say we think it's around 36 and a half thousand machine gunned down in the streets, making these among the largest massacres in the modern history of Iran.

There's been a near total internet shutdown by Iranian authorities as part of their crackdown on the protests, restricting communication inside the country and limiting the flow of information about the killings to the outside world. They are bad people, which has put the which has put the lovies in a quandary. Hate Trump, but Iranian leader bad too. What do we do? Incredibly, the world is more complex than a black and white scenario. So what happens next? Nobody knows.

Ideally, the Iranian people would decide for themselves in a peaceful transition from theocracy to democracy, but I would not put money on it. Iran holds the world's third or fourth largest proven oil reserves, representing about 12 to 13% of the global total as of early 2026. That makes it of interest to many, many countries. And you'd have to wonder whether this is the end of the United Nations and the re-emergence of the strongest country wins. Might makes right.

There is absolutely no doubt that the UN is a rotting, corrupt, inept gravy train full of mediocre international officials who are I'm sure there are some who are there for very, very good reasons. The vast majority appear to be there to feather their own nests. It's failing and has been failing for a very, very, very long time. For a couple of decades it did good work. It kept the world peaceful. It hasn't been working for a long time, utterly ineffectual and costing countries a fortune to maintain for nothing. 

But is Trump invading countries on a whim the best option? The next best alternative? There's got to be something in between. He even went against his own constitution by going, you know what, Iran, I'm in. I'm going in. I don't know. The world is an uncertain and uneasy place right now, and I see no solution anytime soon.

LISTEN ABOVE

When it comes to telling stories about what I did in my weekend, I thought I had a pretty good one, but Donald Trump takes the cake.&nbsp;Bombing the hell out of Iran and taking out the Ayatollah Khamenei and other key members of the ruling theocracy surely trumps what most of us did.
As you will know by now, the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran beginning Saturday. There were talks going on between Washington and Tehran over Iran's nuclear programme, or what remains of it. But the US and Israel decided the talk was going nowhere, and so on Saturday the strikes began.
Iran responded to the attacks with missile and air strikes across the region, including in Israel, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq, creating havoc across the Middle East. Hundreds have been killed, the majority in Iran. Despite that, that's nowhere near as many have been killed Iranians as have been killed by their own government's agents in the form of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard.
Donald Trump says the operation is ahead of schedule. Commentators have said it's difficult to know what will happen next in Iran, what the outcome of taking out the top tier of Iran's rulers will bring about. But it's difficult to know what President Trump's endgame is too. We don't know what's going to happen next with him, as Middle East correspondent at The Economist and political author Gregg Carlstrom said this morning on the Mike Hosking Breakfast.
We've heard wildly different stories from Donald Trump about what he's trying to achieve here. His video message announcing the the war on Saturday morning suggested that the aim was regime change, that he wanted Iranians to come out into the streets and overthrow the government and take control in Iran. But then in an interview with The Atlantic magazine that was published just about an hour ago, he said that the Iranians want to talk, and so he's going to talk to them. 
Maybe there's a diplomatic deal that he can make with this regime that just a day ago he was suggesting to overthrow. So I think it's hard to assess whether this is, you know, successful or not from the American perspective because it's not entirely clear what the Americans want.
Indeed, or what will happen next. It's an ongoing situation. There is apparently a complex but clear process to select a successor to Iran's Supreme Leader, who was also the Commander in Chief. In line with Iran's constitution, a three member interim leadership council is now in charge. They will rule until the body tasked with selecting the top cleric, the Assembly of Experts, completes its work. They can choose an individual or they can choose a leadership council.
Trump just a few hours ago told a reporter from The Atlantic that the country's new leadership, so it would be this interim leadership council, wants to talk with him. He plans to do that. He said they want to talk, I've agreed to talk, so I'll be talking to them. They should have done it sooner. They should have given what was very practical and easy to do sooner. They waited too long. There is no great love amongst the people of Iran for the current regime.
There are reports of Iranian citizens rejoicing in the streets in the midst of the strikes, ecstatic that the Ayatollah is gone. And you can understand why, as I referenced, since the beginning of the 25 26 Iranian protests, there have been widespread massacres of civilians at the behest of the Iranian government. According to the Iranian government, oh, we've only killed 3,117 which is a hell of a lot more than the combined US Israeli air strikes. The people themselves say we think it's around 36 and a half thousand machine gunned down in the streets, making these among the largest massacres in the modern history of Iran.
There's been a near total internet shutdown by Iranian authorities as part of their crackdown on the protests, restricting communication inside the country and limiting the flow of information about the killings to the outside world. They are bad people, which has put the which has put the lovies in a quandary. Hate Trump, but Iranian leader bad too. What do we do? Incredibly, the world is more complex than a black and white scenario. So what happens next? Nobody knows.
Ideally, the Iranian people would decide for themselves in a peaceful transition from theocracy to democracy, but I would not put money on it. Iran holds the world's third or fourth largest proven oil reserves, representing about 12 to 13% of the global total as of early 2026. That makes it of interest to many, many countries. And you'd have to wonder whether this is the end of the United Nations and the re-emergence of the strongest country wins. Might makes right.
There is absolutely no doubt that the UN is a rotting, corrupt, inept gravy train full of mediocre international officials who are I'm sure there are some who are there for very, very good reasons. The vast majority appear to be there to feather their own nests. It's failing and has been failing for a very, very, very long time. For a couple of decades it did good work. It kept the world peaceful. It hasn't been working for a long time, utterly ineffectual and costing countries a fortune to maintain for nothing.&nbsp;
But is Trump invading countries on a whim the best option? The next best alternative? There's got to be something in between. He even went against his own constitution by going, you know what, Iran, I'm in. I'm going in. I don't know. The world is an uncertain and uneasy place right now, and I see no solution anytime soon.
LISTEN ABOVE

Kerre Woodham: The world is in an uneasy place

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/7784f840-c291-422a-924b-ad9000bbad71/clips/9d836161-985c-4f8d-bcea-b4000173dfaf/transcript

Philip Duncan: Weather analyst has a warning ahead of Cyclone Gabrielle's arrival

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