Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

If the mayor or any councillors at the Christchurch City Council are reading this, it's probably going to make you feel a bit uncomfortable. Because, if you think you’re going to get away with letting the chief executive carry the can for the shambles that has obviously been going on under your watch, you’re going to have to think again. Especially now that we know how slack things have been when...

Forget about the Commonwealth Games. We need to start campaigning to get another global sporting event in Canterbury. Can I take you back to Monday March 20. So just over eight months ago. It was the Monday after that brilliant weekend when we had two days of the SailGP yacht racing on Lyttelton Harbour. Remember that? The weather was spectacular. People in the official fanzone said they’d had a g...

Nik Kershaw exploded onto the UK pop scene in 1984 as a solo artist. Recording a string of global hit singles – including ‘Wouldn’t it Be Good’, ‘The Riddle’, and his biggest hit, ‘I Won’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me’. Nik will be part of the wonderful line up at Selwyn Sounds in March, and joined John MacDonald to talk about the concert, and his career, including a surprising admission about his Li...

It appears Christopher Luxon’s tight lid on things could be about to blow, with all this talk about who is and who isn’t going to be Deputy Prime Minister in the new government. If I was National’s deputy leader Nicola Willis, I’d be finding it hard to keep the smile on the dial. But she’s managing it so far, from what I’ve seen of her on TV outside the hotel in Auckland. Because I would have thou...

I bet Dawn Baxendale is feeling like a new woman today. Because, as we now know, she is about to be the ex-chief executive of the Christchurch City Council.   And God help the next person who takes over. Because what an outfit that place is.   Don’t get me wrong. There are lots of good people there. People doing the day-in, day-out stuff that local councils do. But when you’ve got so many of the h...

I have never negotiated a merger. And I have never negotiated an acquisition.    But I still think I could teach our incoming Prime Minister a thing or two.   Because here we are into another week of coalition talks between National, ACT and NZ First and, after all the to-ing and fro-ing from the Cordis Hotel in Auckland, we still don’t have a new Government.   But the bit about it all that seems...

The leadership structure at the Christchurch City Council is falling apart. And it had mayor Phil Mauger in a real tizz at the start of yesterday’s council meeting. This was when he announced that they had to kick people out and go into closed meeting straight away because there was something urgent they needed to discuss about chief executive Dawn Baxendale. I’ve sat through a lot of council meet...

How cringing are these coalition negotiations getting?   I’m very tempted to send Christopher Luxon a text message saying ‘you reap what you sow mate’.   And I would do that, if I had his number. But then he probably wouldn’t reply because he might not believe it’s actually from me.   But if he did. If he did text back and say “Hi John. Great to hear from you. Not sure what you mean.”   I’d say: “...

National may as well just come out now and say its tax plan is history. It’s toast.   Because, as we all knew it would - and as National should have known - the good old NZ First handbrake is proving to be the fly in the ointment in the coalition talks.   And it appears National’s idea to partially fund tax cuts by letting foreign buyers back into the housing market and charging them a 15 percent...

Matt Cross called his first New Zealand Cup at the age of just 26.   Now four years on, Matt prepares for the biggest racing day on the harness calendar once again: the New Zealand Trotting Cup.    It's a huge week for Canterbury, and Matt will call 60 races over eight days of the carnival. He kindly joined John on Newstalk ZB Canterbury Mornings to talk about his preparation for the big day, and...

Christchurch really is putting on a show this week. And I’m not talking about Cup and Show Week.   I’m talking about the city council’s ridiculous show of wasteful spending of public money on its beautification trial on that little bit of Gloucester Street where the Turanga central library is on one side, and the new Court Theatre is being built on the other side. The Isaac Theatre Royal is just d...

Helen Clark has dropped a bombshell. Saying that she reckons if Winston Peters doesn’t like what he’s being offered in a coalition deal with National and ACT, he’ll turn around and try and stitch something up with Labour. Now I know the first thing you might say to that, is ‘what about Chris Hipkins saying he would never work with Winston again’? Well, a couple of things on that. If Labour really...

Today on Politics Friday John MacDonald was joined by Labour's Reuben Davidson and National's Matt Doocey live in studio.   He pressed Doocey on the coalition talks: what on earth is the hold up?   Has Labour made the right call to stick with Hipkins as leader?   And what needs to happen with the Electoral Commission?   LISTEN ABOVE   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Imagine building a road and it lasts 70 years. That’s what a concrete expert from the US is saying we could do here in New Zealand if we used more concrete instead of asphalt everywhere.   Eric Ferrebee is the Senior Director of Technical Services with the American Concrete Pavement Association.   Now I’m no concrete expert. I’m no asphalt expert either. But I reckon concrete roads would be a game...

“I’m back.” That’s what Chris Hipkins said to media after being reaffirmed as leader of the Labour Party. Kelvin Davis has stood aside as deputy and Carmel Sepuloni is now 2-I-C. Chris Hipkins is going to be accused left, right, and centre of an enormous flip-flop in relation to a wealth tax and a capital gains tax. Because, remember how he said before the election, that neither of those would hap...

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I’ve thought that a few times listening, watching and reading some of the media coverage of the coroner’s inquest into the 2019 mosque attacks.   It’s obviously something that Mike Ardagh has thought too. If the name rings a bell - he’s a professor of emergency medicine at the University of Otago in Christchurch. He’s also a specialist in the Emergency Department at...

If you get a text message today from David Seymour - just reply. Just in case it is him.   Which is what Winston Peters should have done. Instead of thinking that the text message he got after the election from “David Seymour” wasn’t from Seymour himself, but was from someone pretending to be David Seymour.   But I suppose that’s what happens when you’ve been Foreign Minister before. You get all “...

So the gangs are bringing in the lawyers and all the legal experts are on the TV news sitting in front of their bookshelves going tut-tut-tut to National over its plan to ban gang patches and tattoos, saying it breaches the Bill of Rights. And then, in the other corner, we’ve got Christopher Luxon saying ‘yeah, nah - we’re going to do it anyway’. Which he would say anyway. But, as I’ve said all al...

Today on Politics Friday, John was joined by Labour’s Megan Woods and National’s Matt Doocey.   They discussed National's gang policy, and the fact that the Mongrel Mob is now getting legal advice.   Why were decisions made to move the Metro Sports Centre to its current location, given the issues with sinking land we are facing now?   And what will happen to improve Oranga Tamariki?   LISTEN ABOVE...

A year ago tonight, it was pandemonium up Pegasus way after fireworks caused a massive fire.    People had to evacuate. I remember talking with someone who had been at the Woodend Beach Holiday Park. He was telling me about helping a family get out of there.   They were packing up a caravan van and he said you could see the orange glow from the flames getting closer and closer.   In total, about 1...

Christchurch Mayor Phil Mauger joined John MacDonald live in studio this morning for their weekly chat.   John asked about the ongoing Parakiore Metro Sports situation and whether the project will continue to face delays.   They also talked about the Council's response to the Bromley Plant fire, and why it’s come under fire.   Plus, why has Christchurch East been treated so poorly?   LISTEN ABOVE...

Do you reckon we’re kidding ourselves thinking that a $150 fine is enough to put people off using their phones when they’re driving?   From what I see, I think we are. I was at an intersection the other day, waiting for the lights, and I saw this driver in the car next to me had their phone sitting on the steering wheel.   So they were using the steering wheel as if it was a computer stand at home...

How about this for a statistic to make you proud to be a New Zealander?   In the past seven years, since Oranga Tamariki was established, 57 kids have died because of abuse or neglect in New Zealand.   They’re the numbers being reported today as we try to get our heads around the death of another toddler, Ruthless Empire, who died just days before his second birthday from what the police described...

If you hadn’t heard of Tom Foley before yesterday, you’ve probably heard of him now.   He was the Television Match Official - or TMO - in yesterday’s Rugby World Cup final. If you were watching the match on TV, he was the guy in the jacket and tie who kept popping up in the corner of the screen.   In fact, did he “pop up”? Or was he on screen the whole time? It felt like he was there the whole tim...

To say that Winston Peters is the Donald Trump of New Zealand politics would probably be going too far. But after his nonsense on the X social media platform about Dame Jacinda Ardern and the Christchurch mosque attacks, you’ve got to say he’s got a touch of the old Donald about him. And it’s being suggested today that, after all his nonsense this week, he has shown once-and-for-all that he’s not...