A turning point for Auckland.

The third annual State of the City report has been released, showing how we compare on a global scale.

It highlights strengths in sustainability, resilience, and culture, but says we lag behind in prosperity, skills, and innovation development.

Deloitte’s Future of Auckland Lead Kate Sutton told Andrew Dickens that Auckland’s at 40% of GDP while the productivity per capita is about 20% lower than comparable cities around the world.

She says we’re doing more for less, and a step up needs to be done to deal with the structural reasons behind it.

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Here we go again.

The polytechs that were centralised by the last government are going to be de-centralised by the current mob.

It's not quite back to the future because it won't be the same as we had before the politicians started tinkering.

There will now be ten polytechs run locally, six others will have to prove their financial viability, but it still feels like we're going back to where we started from.

And this ideological flip flop isn't free.

The Labour Government allocated hundreds of millions of dollars over several years to support the merger and transformation of the vocational education sector.

And now National has budgeted $200 million to fund the reversal.

Key Cost Drivers in this change include swapping out the IT and systems integration across multiple institutions from centralised to local.

Obviously, staff restructuring, which includes finding new staff for the polytechs and firing some staff created in the centralisation.

Then there's branding and communications and legal and compliance costs.

It isn't cheap and at the end of the day, we're back to square one.

The same things happening over at Health New Zealand. It's happening all over the country as the government reverses Labour's changes. People are packing up their desks that they packed up four years ago.

Now who to blame? Labour for coming up with the new ideas in the first place, or National's dogged determination to reverse everything the last mob did because they've built their brand on not being Labour?

I don't know about you but the whole thing feels like wasteful government spending, and are we substantially better off?

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On the Early Edition with Andrew Dickens Full Show Podcast Tuesday 15th of July 2025, Secondary Principals Council Chair and Aotea College Principal Kate Gainsford joins Andrew Dickens to discuss the number of students passing the NCEA literacy and numeracy co-requisite tests slowly on the rise.

Dr Sandra Grey, National Secretary of the Tertiary Education Union, shares her thoughts on the Government’s plan to replace Te Pūkenga and return to a more localised polytech model.

Kate Sutton, Future of Auckland Lead at Deloitte, breaks down a new global report comparing Auckland’s strengths and weaknesses on the world stage.

Plus, Australia Correspondent Donna Demaio has the incredible story of a German backpacker found alive after surviving 11 days lost in the harsh outback.

Get the Early Edition Full Show Podcast every weekday on iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Concerns we're narrowing the focus too much in the push to improve literacy and numeracy rates.

Small improvements were seen on last year with 57 percent of NCEA students achieving the numeracy standard, 61 percent achieving the reading standard and 55 percent achieving the writing standard.

Secondary Principals Council Chair, Kate Gainsford told Andrew Dickens the focus hasn't been spread across other important subjects like science or languages.

She says we need to ensure we don't neglect other parts of the curriculum while also looking at the basics.

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Over the weekend, a group of well-known organizations published an open letter to the Prime Minister.

Organizations like the EMA, 2degrees and Consumer New Zealand all signed the letter calling for the government to reform the energy sector.

Chief Executive of Consumer New Zealand John Duffy said that the government needs to have a fast, but measured response.

He said, ‘[We don’t] want the minister to rush into a knee-jerk reaction.’

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The Government's unveiling new initiatives in hopes of doubling the international education sector.

Education Minister Erica Stanford wants it to contribute 7.2 billion dollars to the economy by 2034.

The Government's plan begins with expanding work rights to all tertiary students in approved exchange programmes.

It's also allowing eligible students to work 25-hours per week - up from the current 20.

It will also investigate a new short-duration work visa and streamlining multi-year visa application.

Act Tertiary Education Spokesperson Dr Parmjeet Parmar told Andrew Dickens she welcomes the news.

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I find it ironic that the government and the electorate are once a gain keen on getting rid of some of the layers of our council bureaucracy.

First NZ First’s Shane Jones publicly questioned the role of regional councils, pondering whether “there’s going to be a compelling case for regional government to continue to exist”.

Then Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told Mike Hosking that the Government was looking at local government reform.

On Friday Matthew Hooten wrote a piece about Regional Councils reiterating Chris Bishop’s question that he’s been asking many local councillors.

Is there any point in having regional councils.

So it's on the table.

Of course the battle against bureaucracy is alive and well around the world. Duplication of services and excessive layers of governance means that savings could be made easily and safely and it's something we've always discussed.

Last term the government reformed District Health Board from 20 boards into a single entity Health New Zealand or just that reason but the new government has taken against that and they've announced a return to locally delivered healthcare because they believe that in regional decision making is the best way to go.

We're still waiting to see what that will look like.

Meanwhile reform of regional councils looks awfully like the formation of Auckland's Super City.

A reform that has a heap of enemies because of it's devolution of power away from communities.

As Hooten says the reason we hate the Super City are the Council Controlled Organisations a move that was supposed to replicate State Owned Enterprises.

But the problem there is that we can't but shares in CCOs so they become the worst of things. A mongrel hybrid of Council bureaucracies and Private Monopolies.

So we seem to like amalgamating public bodies but then when it happens we moan that our voices are no longer heard and that bureaucracies have become too huge and out of control.

So, what is it people.

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