It was very clever of the Government announcing that it was going to pump $12 billion into defence before saying anything about where the money’s coming from.

A lot of us got all excited about the defence money because, even if you’re a pacifist, you would have to agree that our defence force has been running on the smell of an oily rag for a very long time. That’s just a fact.

And we kind of accepted that there would have to be trade-offs. We just didn’t know, and we still don’t know, what those trade-offs are going to be.

Today though it’s being proposed that NZ Super should be the Peter that pays Paul, and that we need to sort out the elephant in the room and make people wait longer before they get the pension. And I agree.

It’s come from economist Cameron Bagrie who has been trying to find out where the defence spend money is coming from. Without any detail forthcoming from the Government, he’s suggesting the Super scheme.

He’s saying: “We cannot continue to shy away from that rising expense if other priorities, such as defence, are going to be met.”

He’s not the only one talking about the pension scheme needing a reworking.

The NZ Herald’s head of business Fran O’Sullivan says it was a National Government that increased the entitlement age for NZ Super from 60 to 65.

But that the current National Party leadership is sticking with the idea of not doing anything about the eligibility age until 2044. The party’s current commitment is to keep the age at 65 for another 19 years.

Fran O’Sullivan describes that as “nonsense”. And I agree with her too. There is no way we can afford to keep paying the pension to anyone and everyone once they turn 65 for another 19 years.

National’s policy at the moment commits it to increasing the age of entitlement to 67 after 2044, which means no one born before 1979 will be affected. So someone who is 47 now, for example, would still get the pension when they turn 65. Crazy.

There’s also nothing in National’s policy about doing something about the other nonsensical part of all this – where people still get the pension if they keep working beyond 65.

Because the pension —when it comes down to it— is to help stop people falling into poverty after they retire. That’s what it’s designed for. It’s not there to pay for some joker’s beer on a Friday and Saturday night, who doesn’t need it for anything else because he’s still working and earning a salary or wages.

Or he might be someone who’s made a truckload of money running a business and still earns a dividend or maybe even still draws a salary.

Back to Cameron Bagrie. He’s saying today that health and NZ Super make up 37% of government operational expenses and that things are only going to get tighter with more defence spending.

He says: “We now have a new pressure in the mix: national security - which is being prioritised. No credible political party can ignore that.”

Referring to the pension, he says: “We cannot continue to shy away from that rising expense if other priorities, such as defence, are going to be met.”

It’s not something former National Prime Minister Jim Bolger shied away from.

Somehow, he managed to convince New Zealanders that increasing the qualifying age for was “plain common sense”, because people were living longer and receiving the pension for a lot longer.

Age eligibility went up to 61 within a year of that and it’s been 65 since 2001.

And just like it was looking less affordable then, it’s looking even less affordable now.

That's why we need to have the same fortitude - or our politicians do - and they need to bite the bullet, instead of ignoring it.

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Here’s a stat for you: 25 percent of cigarettes sold in New Zealand are from the black market.

They’re being smuggled into the country and criminals are making millions selling them on Facebook Marketplace and construction sites. All over the place. And you probably don’t have to go far to find a dairy selling them, either.

That figure has been put out by the tobacco industry in New Zealand. Although, there was an expert saying this morning that he reckons it’s not quite as bad as the tobacco companies are saying.

Either way - whatever the figure actually is - there are smokers balking at the cost of a packet of cigarettes and pouches of tobacco and they’re quite happy to buy the illegal stuff.

And I reckon the time has come to have a re-think about how we’re dealing with cigarette smoking.

Because the approach that’s been taken so far - aside from treatment programmes and all that - has largely been about punishing people in the pocket if they want to smoke.

More and more taxes, to the point where people are paying a small fortune. And, if we want to try and reduce the amount of illegal tobacco trading going on, then I think we need to think whether piling more tax on tobacco is worth it.

I don’t think it is. I’m not saying that we should make cigarettes cheaper - but I don’t think we should make them more expensive than they are now.

Because, if we do, then the illegal trade is going to grow even more and that will mean less tax revenue for the Government through the legitimate tobacco market.

The thing too about not adding more taxes to ciggies and tobacco, is that it would still keep the price out of the reach of people like teenagers. People who could become the next generation of smokers.

I was talking to someone who said their partner used to make a special trip into town to buy tobacco from a dairy in Christchurch that was selling pouches that were about $20 cheaper than what the legitimate stuff was going for.

And they were saying that their partner would go into the dairy, ask if they had any of the cheap stuff and, sure enough, reach into the drawer and out it would come.

It was worth the drive into the city to get it, apparently.

Customs is saying today that these groups are bringing truckloads of the stuff into the country - mainly by sea - using what customs describes as “sophisticated smuggling tactics similar to the tactics used by drug smugglers".

It says they are serious criminals. Not just opportunists having a go because they’re worried about the price of tobacco”.

The expert from Auckland University who was on Newstalk ZB this morning says the solution is getting more people off smoking.

I agree. But I also think that’s your ideal scenario kind of thing.

Which is why I think the time has come to stop piling more taxes on cigarettes and tobacco. It’s done its job. Making cigarettes more and more expensive is just going to feed demand for the illegal stuff.

Which is ripping us off. Because with every packet of illegal cigarettes sold, there’s no tax revenue. Money that we could all benefit from.

And why would we continue to let that happen?

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I love the way David Seymour is describing the size of cabinet and the number of government departments.

He says the whole lot are "a big, complicated bureaucratic beast". And he is spot on.

Here are the numbers that say it all: we have 82 portfolios, 28 ministers, and 41 separate government departments and agencies. If that doesn’t sound like a complicated beast, I don’t what does.

So no argument from me.

No argument also from Oliver Hartwich, who is Executive Director at the NZ Initiative think tank. He says part of the problem is that we have created all of these different outfits that, pretty much, look after similar things.

Now Oliver Hartwich thinks we could get away with having as few as 15 cabinet ministers instead of the 28 we have at the moment. But he reckons maybe 20 is more realistic.

Although, he also told Mike Hosking that he heard Ruth Richardson say recently that she thinks we should have no more than 12 cabinet ministers.

Now, granted, I've never been a cabinet minister so I don’t have any inside expert knowledge, but I'm going to give it a go anyway. And I reckon we could go really hardcore and have a prime minister with two deputy prime ministers reporting to them.

Those two deputies would have all the other ministers reporting to them. And I would streamline the total number of ministers, generally within the areas of law and order, finance, defence and security, health and social services, education, and the arts.

That’s just a rough example of my streamlined cabinet.

But Seymour's not just having a go at the number of cabinet ministers, he’s also got the number of government departments and agencies in his line of sight, and I know a thing or two about them.

Because in previous lives I've worked at a few, and they are monsters.

David Seymour is describing them as "bureaucratic beasts". I’d describe government departments and agencies as “beastly spaghetti junctions”.

And that’s just what it’s like inside these departments, let alone what happens between them. Because, despite politicians talking about these departments being “all of government”, they’re not.

That’s this theoretical idea that all government departments get on swimmingly, and talk to each other about everything, and they're all best mates, and because of that us taxpayers get the best bang for our buck.

But it’s not like that at all. They work in silos. They compete with each other for funding. They don’t talk to each other.

One great thing the government has done to try and sort out this shambles is in the area of weather forecasting.

NIWA and MetService aren’t government departments exactly, but they are state-owned enterprises, and Simeon Brown announced a few weeks back that they’re going to be merged.

Which makes perfect sense. And that’s what we need to see more of.

Examples: do we need a Ministry of Education and an Education Review Office? I don’t think so. Do we need a Ministry of Justice and a Department of Corrections? Possibly not. Do we need a Department of Conservation and a Ministry for the Environment?

See what I mean?

So I'm right with David Seymour, and I think we would all be winners with less cabinet ministers and less government departments and agencies.

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If you think it’s expensive to travel around the country now, it’s about to get more expensive with KiwiRail ditching one of its ferries.

But even though flying isn’t cheap, KiwiRail can forget about me making any interisland ferry bookings. Because why would ya?

Two dungers —either of which can be out of service on any given day— no thanks.

This all goes back to the decision by the Government not long after it came to power to pull the plug on the mega ferry project that Labour seemed to have an open cheque book for.

Originally, the cost of getting the new mega ferries and bringing the portside infrastructure up-to-scratch was going to be around $1.5 billion.

But that blew out to $3 billion and Finance Minister Nicola Willis said “no” when KiwiRail came knocking asking for more money.

She said at the time that Cabinet wasn’t confident that there wouldn’t be further cost blow-outs. A bit further down the track, she washed her hands of the whole thing and handed-it over to Winston Peters who became the Minister for Rail with his number one job being to find cheaper ferries and fast.

And, as we now know, they're expected to be here in 2029. In fact, pretty much all we know. We don't know how much they're going to cost. We also don't know how much it has cost or is going to cost the Government to get out of the original ship building contract.

But this isn’t about the politics today. The conversation today is about KiwiRail running just two ferries on Cook Strait for the next four years, and what that’s going to mean.

What it’s going to mean for passengers, and what it’s going to mean for people shifting freight up and down the country.

Let’s start with passengers: there’s no doubt it’s going to get more expensive to cross the Strait. That’s just how business works.

The Aratere does two crossings a day and can carry up to 400 passengers. So there’s 800 passengers a day that won’t be crossing. To be fair to KiwiRail, they are saying that they think the most impact on passengers will happen during the peak season.

But, either way, it’s only going to lead to increased prices and decreased reliability.

Then there’s the freight issue. There’s already no shortage of people saying how unreliable the Interislander has become for them getting their products to and from the North and South Islands.

I see that road freight lobby group Transporting New Zealand is saying that the Aratere going out of service will create more risk for freight.

Chief Executive Dom Kalasih is saying today that it will be "fascinating” to see what happens with freight with no rail-enabled ferries.

But it’s not the lack of rail that’s going to be an issue, because guess how much freight in New Zealand is carried on trucks? Ninety percent. And a lot of them will be trucking operators that cross Cook Strait on the Interislander, competing for space paying higher prices.

And businesses paying more will mean everybody paying more.

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Get ready for what we now know will be a winter of discontent after the announcement by Nicola Willis that she is slashing government spending.

Which shows us once and for all, that the income tax cuts were a dreadful mistake. Because it’s not just ideology driving these budget cuts - it’s need.

The Government has much less money coming in the door through taxation - which means it’s got much less to spend.

And, maybe conveniently, the Finance Minister’s announcement yesterday came 48 hours before 5,000+ senior doctors go on strike wanting more pay.

But if the Minister was watching the news last night, she would have seen people asked in the street what they thought she should focus her spending on in next month’s budget. And it was clear, hands down, that most people thought it was health. And I’m the same.

If there’s one thing that affects us all in some way, shape or form - it’s the state of the health system.

I think the Government needs to take holistic view of the world when it comes to health and not just pour money into hospitals. But I think health spending or increased health spending needs to go into things from treating people who are really crook, people who need treatment to live productive and happy lives, but also things that help prevent people from getting unwell in the first place.

The bigger issue for the Government though, aside from the state of the books, is maintaining public confidence. Winter is always the hardest time for us to keep our chin up and the Government will be aware of that.

And no amount of cheerleading or writing-off its political opponents as moaners with no ambition is going to cut it anymore. Nor is some of the patronising talk we’re hearing from the Finance Minister, who is at-risk of becoming as patronising as Jacinda Ardern was by the end of her tenure.

We don't need to be told about household budgets and credit cards being declined to understand that the country is in the shtook. Just like we don't need patronising talk about Toyota Corolla ferries instead of Ferrari ferries.

Even if you think Nicola Willis is the best thing since Ruth Richardson, you must be getting tired of some of the talk.

The other thing that gets me is that a lot of people bang on about us needing governments with business experience.

You know, successful people who know how to run a budget. But it always seems to me that when these so-called successful people do get into government, they do the complete opposite of what people expect them to do.

For example: when you run a successful business, yes, you do keep an eye on costs. But there’s another thing you do as well when you run a business: you try to get as much revenue in the door, as possible.

But this government has done the complete opposite of that with its tax cuts.

No one’s better off. And the Government has way less money to spend.

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The Labour Leader is pushing back against criticism of emergency housing motels amid an increase in reports of concern to Oranga Tamariki.

It estimates its seen a 45% increase in reports in the year to April, and data shows that as of March 31st, there were 1,391 children overdue to be given a social worker.

Chris Hipkins is rebuking the idea the situation is a legacy of the previous Labour Government, telling John MacDonald that economic circumstances often result in a rise in negative statistics, as families are under a lot of financial pressure.

He accepts this kind of thing builds over time, but an increase of this magnitude cannot solely be blamed on the previous government, and the current government has played a role.

"If we've got more kids living on the streets and living in cars because they've booted everyone out of emergency accommodation and they're being referred to Oranga Tamariki as a result of that, which the government was told would happen, with their emergency accommodation policy, then yes, that is the government's responsibility."

Motels were one of the Labour Party's emergency housing solutions, and Hipkins admits that it's not optimal, but it's better than having people living in cars or under bridges.

LISTEN ABOVE

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I reckon a lot of us in Canterbury won’t be as excited as people elsewhere in the country about the Government’s plan to let builders, plumbers and drainlayers sign-off their own work.

I say that because of the bare-faced lies a lot of us were told by builders after the quakes.

So this is going to apply to the construction of simple, standardised houses to try and reduce the need for so many council inspections and to speed-up building times.

The Government reckons there’s about 3,000 homes that will pop-up sooner through these changes.

But the only way I’d be happy to even consider going along with this, would be if the Government listens to what the NZ Certified Builders organisation is saying.

Malcolm Fleming heads it and while he thinks, overall, the Government is doing the right thing, he reckons the Government should go further and introduce a quality mark for builders. To give homeowners confidence that their builder is qualified to sign-off their own work.

I think it's a brilliant idea.

Before the earthquakes, we did quite a major renovation and I reckon, back then, I would have been quite happy for the builder to sign things off himself.

He was an ex-detective. A great guy. And we didn’t have any problems with him at all.

But that was back in the day when I was a bit more trusting. Not now, though.

Because from what we saw here in Canterbury, when there’s the lure of money and cashflow and a need to keep your people busy, it can be pretty tempting for tradespeople to cut corners.

And that’s what I see this new scheme being. A licence to cut corners.

There are very good and reliable and trustworthy builders, plumbers and drainlayers who probably think I need to get over it.

And maybe I do. But, when you get to the point of dreading seeing anyone in a high vis top coming down your driveway because you’ve been stung one too many times, then I can’t help feeling the way I do about this move by the Government.

I won't be the only person in Canterbury feeling this way. I won't be the only person in the whole country feeling this way.

Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk, though, thinks he’s onto a winner.

He’s saying: “Making it easier and more affordable to build would open the door to home ownership for more kiwis and support growth and job creation in the construction sector.”

He says: “We can’t achieve this vision while the building consent system remains slow and overloaded. Even simple, single-storey homes must go through around 12 inspections before they’re finished, with costly delays when demand is high.

“At a time when many kiwis are locked out of the housing market, that’s simply not good enough.”

But what I would say to that, is that failing to learn from past mistakes isn’t good enough, either.

And, surely, if we have learned anything from Canterbury's earthquake recovery experience it’s this. That, when it comes to building, more safeguards are needed - not less.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I reckon a lot of us in Canterbury won’t be as excited as people elsewhere in the country about the Government’s plan to let builders, plumbers and drainlayers sign-off their own work.

I say that because of the bare faced lies a lot of us were told by builders after the quakes.

So this is going to apply to the construction of simple, standardised houses to try and reduce the need for so many council inspections and to speed-up building times.

The Government reckons there’s about 3,000 homes that will pop-up sooner through these changes. But the only way I’d be happy to even consider going along with this, would be if the Government listens to what the NZ Certified Builders organisation is saying.

Malcolm Fleming heads it and while he thinks, overall, the Government is doing the right thing, he reckons the Government should go further and introduce a quality mark for builders. To give homeowners confidence that their builder is qualified to sign-off their own work.

I think it's a brilliant idea.

Before the earthquakes we did quite a major renovation and I reckon, back then, I would have been quite happy for the builder to sign things off himself. He was an ex-detective. A great guy. And we didn’t have any problems with him at all.

But that was back in the day when I was a bit more trusting. Not now, though.

Because from what we saw here in Canterbury, when there’s the lure of money and cashflow and a need to keep your people busy, it can be pretty tempting for tradespeople to cut corners.

And that’s what I see this new scheme being. A licence to cut corners.

There are very good and reliable and trustworthy builders, plumbers and drainlayers who probably think I need to get over it.

And maybe I do. But, when you get to the point of dreading seeing anyone in a high vis top coming down your driveway because you’ve been stung one too many times, then I can’t help feeling the way I do about this move by the Government.

I won't be the only person in Canterbury feeling this way. I won't be the only person in the whole country feeling this way.

Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk, though, thinks he’s onto a winner.

He’s saying: “Making it easier and more affordable to build would open the door to home ownership for more Kiwis and support growth and job creation in the construction sector.”

He says: “We can’t achieve this vision while the building consent system remains slow and overloaded. Even simple, single-storey homes must go through around 12 inspections before they’re finished, with costly delays when demand is high.

“At a time when many Kiwis are locked out of the housing market, that’s simply not good enough.”

But what I would say to that is that failing to learn from past mistakes isn’t good enough, either.

And, surely, if we have learned anything from Canterbury's earthquake recovery experience it’s this. That, when it comes to building, more safeguards are needed - not less.

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