Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

You’ll remember all the noise about the Rolleston Avenue/Park Terrace cycleway when some Christchurch city councillors and the mayor claimed they’d been blindsided and didn’t know it was going to happen without them having the chance to give it the green light. And the mayor went ballistic saying that council staff were running amok and needed to be reined in. And Aaron Keown and James Gough chime...

We are obsessed with qualifications. If you want evidence, take all the noise we’re hearing today about the news that the number of students leaving school with NCEA Level 2 or above dropped again last year to the lowest level in a decade. People are jumping up and down because the OECD reckons that if someone’s going to be employable, they need at least Level 2 NCEA. Which fuels even further this...

If you’re driving on State Highway One south of Christchurch anytime soon, be aware that it's as good as it's going to get.   I remember someone telling me once that they were driving that piece of road with a person visiting from overseas who asked my friend why they weren’t taking the main highway. And my friend had to say that they were actually on the main highway.    I also remember last elec...

There’s something going on at the Christchurch City Council at the moment that raises a very interesting question about how we expect or want people elected to our local councils to behave. So, even though strictly speaking it’s a Christchurch City Council thing, this is actually relevant wherever you live. The story begins with Christchurch councillor Aaron Keown, who is in the dog box for saying...

How likely is it, do you think, that when the Australian Prime Minister jumped on the plane yesterday after his visit to Wellington and headed back to Canberra, Chris Hipkins wished he was on the plane too? You know, like kids, they’ll have a playdate with one of their mates, but they don’t want the party to end and then they want to turn it into a sleepover. I reckon that’s how Hipkins will have...

New Zealand would have to be the undisputed health and safety champion of the world. Which is why I’ve always found it weird that we’re quite happy for any Tom, Dick or Harry with a smartphone to jump on one of those rental e-scooters and go for it. Lime Scooters. Flamingo scooters. You know the ones I’m talking about. Right now, you can find one of those things, get your phone out, scan the code...

Is Chris Hipkins in the Beehive? Or is he in la-la land? Because, after everything that’s happened with his government since he took over at the start of the year, he seems to think Labour can still win this year’s election. Even after the most-recent calamity, with now-former minister Kiri Allan being over the legal alcohol limit , crashing a car and failing to accompany a police officer on Sunda...

Do you remember back when Prime Minister Chris Hipkins was over in China, and he said he was having such a great time that he didn’t really want to go home? I reckon he’s wishing he was still in Beijing, with the news that Kiri Allan has resigned from Cabinet after being charged with reckless driving and resisting arrest in Wellington last night. She was also over the legal alcohol limit. But she...

“You don’t know what I’m capable of.” That - or words to that effect - is what Matu Reid said to his partner back in 2021 after he’d pushed her off a chair, thrown an object at her head, kicked her in the stomach - sending her flying backwards - stood over her, and grabbed her throat for about 10 seconds. During which time she couldn’t breathe. Well, we now know exactly what he’s capable of. Or wa...

Another day and another rushed law and order policy announcement from Labour. Yesterday’s one was the third this week, and pretty much focused on ram raids and what to do with 12 and 13-year-old kids who get involved in them. As the week’s gone on, I’ve thought Labour’s policy announcements have been pretty lame and yesterday’s was no exception. Labour thinks treating 12 and 13-year-olds as crimin...

Christchurch mayor Phil Mauger needs to realise it’s not 1974 anymore. That was the year that Christchurch hosted the Commonwealth Games. But, no sooner had the premier of Victoria announced yesterday that his state government was pulling the plug on hosting the 2026 games because a cost blow-out, Phil Mauger was banging on about Christchurch putting its hand up. This is not a new thing for Phil....

Michael Cullen would be turning in his grave if he knew about the National Party’s plan to let people dip into their KiwiSaver to pay for the bond on a flat. Under a National-led government, anyone under-30 moving into a rental property will be able to do just that. Apparently, the idea came from the Young Nationals and, according to National’s housing spokesperson Chris Bishop, they did quite a b...

Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews has pulled the pin on hosting the 2026 Games, saying the near-tripling of the 2.6 billion-dollar-estimate is unaffordable. He says instead the money will go on building new sport facilities and putting a billion dollars into social housing. Former Olympic athlete Dick Tayler is best known for his success at the 1974 Commonwealth Games, and he joined John MacDonald t...

On first blush, National’s new pothole policy could be seen as a good thing. Essentially, what it wants to do if it forms the next government, is set-up a special Pothole Repair Fund and cut the pothole response rate from 48 hours to 24 hours. Which I never knew existed - but it does, apparently. It would be a $500 million fund and National says it would pay for it by stopping the speed limit chan...

When Christchurch gets something between its teeth, it really makes a meal of it. One example would be the stoush that happened when the University of Canterbury thought it might build a new music school building at the Arts Centre. That was pre-earthquake but, man alive, that really got peoples’ knickers in a twist. The latest example is the stoush over the so-called “temporary” cycleway on Rolle...

You don’t hear the political commentators and political scientists put it this way, but Labour is toast. That’s according to new analysis by the NZ Herald, which has found there is now almost no chance of Labour and the Greens getting over the line by polling day and a National-Act coalition is most likely to be in government after the election in October. Unless, something in particular happens....

The Government should be cringing. Not wincing, not shifting uncomfortably in its chair, not trying to avoid eye contact with us. It should be cringing. Because after all the talk about apologising for the dawn raids on suspected overstayers - which began in Auckland in the 1970s - and all the sorrow and all the tears, they just kept on going. The strongest words the Acting Prime Minister could sa...

Here’s one thing I can pretty much guarantee: the ACT Party’s idea of dealing with 17-year-old criminal offenders in the adult courts, instead of the Youth Court, won’t reduce crime. It just won’t. Because I actually don’t believe that tougher penalties or harsher approaches make any difference as to whether someone commits a crime or not. Because if penalties were enough to keep people on the rig...

If you go to your medicine cabinet or the box in the pantry where you keep all your medicines and plasters and things, do you honestly think you won’t find anything in there that’s passed its use-by date? Be honest. And ok, if there’s nothing in your medicine cabinet or medical kit that isn’t out of date, chances are that’s because you’re one of those people who doesn’t keep anything that’s past t...

If you have to call the Police today, how confident are you that you’re going to get the response you’d expect? And by that, I mean the Police turning up when you’d expect them to. You hear people say all the time, don’t you, that if they’ve had to call 111 it can feel like a lifetime before the emergency services have arrived. Which is natural, because if there’s something really serious happenin...

How much faith do you have in the Government’s big announcement that it’s finally going to do something about the critical shortage of doctors, nurses and other health professionals? My quick answer is “not much”. Especially when you consider that it may not be around after October 14. Current forecasts say we will need nearly 13,000 extra nurses and more than 5,000 more doctors within a decade. B...

Poor old Christopher Luxon. He got out of Wellington yesterday - out of the beltway as he said to reporters when he arrived - to do a walkabout in Tawa, north of the city. And reading between the lines in some of the coverage it was a bit choreographed. Remember last election campaign when Judith Collins had those loving admirers planted along Ponsonby Road in Auckland. I think the National Party'...

When I was a kid, growing up in Dunedin, I used to hear adults talking about The Blue Flies. I don’t know if it was just a Dunedin thing. But I eventually found out that these Blue Flies people were talking about were parking wardens. They were called Blue Flies because they dressed in blue uniforms and they were as welcome as a fly. And however many million years it is since I was a kid, nothing’...

The way things are going, I’ll be paying nearly $15 to fill the tank up. That’s the tank in the scooter, by the way. And, if I ride it every work day, it’ll be about a week-and-a-half before I need to fill it up again. Different story, of course, with our cars. Especially after midnight tonight when the Government’s fuel tax discount comes to an end. And so, tomorrow, we’ll be paying 29 cents more...

John MacDonald was joined by Duncan Webb and Gerry Brownlee on Canterbury Mornings for Politics Friday. What on earth is going on with Kiri Allan's office? Was the fuel subsidy such a great idea now we have spent so much money on it? And what good will come from the Prime Minister's trip to China?  LISTEN ABOVE   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.