It is the end of the month. There's only 12 of them in a year. Into the first month of the year and still there are schools that are not back yet. Could someone please explain to me how it is reasonable in this day and age to have such disparate and wide-ranging start dates for the school year?

I don't know about your particular school, or your area, but of the ones I know about, Auckland Grammar borders have been back for two weeks. That seems perfectly reasonable. Mount Albert borders have been back one night, one day, and now they're off for the weekend. Another college, one of our colleagues has a son at that college, they're not opening the gates till the 10th of February. The 10th of February. Some primary schools started back this week, our kids start back next week. But then of course, there's Waitangi Day in the middle, so that's a bit disruptive.

No slight against the teachers. I've been helping out a bit with pickups and childminding and whenever I've gone into school to pick up the kids from their holiday programme, teachers are there getting their classrooms ready for the school year and prepping and doing what they do. But why on Earth hasn't the school year started? Why are we still prepping for a school year that is now one month gone? Most kids that I've spoken to, of numerous ages, are desperate to get back to see their mates, to learn new stuff, to play sport, to have some routine.

And a lot of parents are coming to the end of their respective tethers too. The days of mum and dad disappearing with the family to the batch over Christmas and then mum and the kids staying down there for weeks on end, being oiled up with suntan oil and put out to fry in the sun while mum read the Jilly Cooper’s. Dad, going to work Monday to Friday, then coming back on Friday and you could hear Dad coming from miles away because they'd be towing the trailer with the Swappa Crates in the back, and they'd be clanking their way down the driveway. Those days are long gone. I'm sure some families still do that, but for most families, you have to work.

For a lot of parents, the pay packets from the first few weeks back at work goes straight to the holiday programmes that the kids are enrolled into so parents can keep their jobs. And as for the poor parents with children at primary, intermediate, and secondary, it is absolutely impossible. There must be a really good reason, she said optimistically and perhaps naively, there must be a really good reason why school start dates are so disparate, random and arbitrary. But for the life of me, I don't know what that good reason would be.

Do you think while the government is focused on revamping our education system and bringing some form of uniformity to what is taught and how it is taught so that it's not so random, depending on which school you go to and which part of the country, do you think while they're at it, they should be looking at standardising the start of the school year as well? I certainly do.

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New Zealand’s “rockstar economy” seems to have become washed up.

HSBC chief economist Paul Bloxham coined the term in 2014, and in an update last week confirmed that that’s far from the case at present.

He says that the economy had the largest decline in economic growth in the developed world last year, driven by interest rate increases in response to post-pandemic inflation.

Bloxham joined Kerre Woodham to dig into the data, and discuss what could be done to improve the economy.

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Some farmers are shearing back the costs with new sheep breeds.

Meant for meat production, ‘Nudies’ are a breed of sheep that don’t grow wool, allowing farmers to cut costs as there’s no need for shearing, dagging, or crutching.

Pierre Syben from Wairere Rams in Masterton told Kerre Woodham in his view, the industry will likely split between the people who stick with wool and those who move towards the Nudies.

He says that hopefully as more people go into non-sheering sheep, it will lift the price of wool as at the moment, it’s a loss-making venture.

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There’s nothing wrong with backing yourself but, as a country, we have some pretty high and mighty ideas sometimes.

A good example is the previous Labour government’s approach that, when it comes to tourism, we should only try to get the people with truckloads of money to come here for a holiday. What they called the “higher value tourists”.

And I’m delighted that the Government is saying we need to get over ourselves and pretty much anyone and everyone who wants to visit from overseas is going to be welcome to come here.

Nicola Willis, the new economic growth minister, is making the very good point that it was all very well for the previous government to think that getting the people with big money over here was the better bet. But that was no guarantee of big spending.

She’s saying today: “I want all tourists. Because, ultimately, it’s not the government that decides how much a tourist spends when they come to New Zealand. The tourist will make that decision.”

She says: “Our job is to make it easy for them to come in the door, easy for them to come to New Zealand. Then, when they get here, I’ve got great faith in our tourism providers that they’ll do everything they can to get as many dollars out of those back pockets as possible.”

No arguments from me there. Because we are not Venice, we are not overrun with tourists. In fact, I would say that we’ve never been overrun with tourists, not even before Covid.

Tell that to the bloke in Queenstown though who got into an argument with a mate of mine in a burger bar there one night.

We were there with a whole bunch of people and this guy was telling us how much of a pain in the backside it was to have all us out-of-towners there.

“Loopies” he called us. I remember, back in the day, the locals in Wanaka used to talk about all the “loopies” coming to visit for a holiday, as well.

But, as my mate politely pointed out to this guy in the burger bar - no tourists, no visitors, no Queenstown. Even our lot. Who were there on the smell of an oily rag.

Another thing too is that, if we’re totally honest with ourselves, we’re not actually that special compared to all the other countries that international tourists have the option of visiting.

Yes, New Zealand is beautiful. And when you go to places like Glenorchy, near Queenstown, for example —which I did a few weeks back, and which is a stunning part of the country— it reminds you what a special place this is.

But there are lots of other special and beautiful places in the world too.

Which is why I think it’s great that the Government plans to get us off this high horse that the last government put us on when it comes to the type of people we want to try and get over here for a holiday.

Why I think it’s great that the new thinking, is that anyone who wants to come here is welcome.

But. And there’s always a but – actually, there are a couple of buts.

One of them, is that tourism is not a silver bullet on its own. Because, generally, tourism jobs don’t pay all that well.

The other but —and this is the more significant one— is that if this is the approach the Government’s going to take, it has to do more than what Nicola Willis is talking about.

Because it’s all very well to say that it’s the Government’s job to get the tourists here and it’s the tourism operators’ job to get as much money as possible out of them once they’re here.

But, as people in places like Franz Josef know, more visitors means more demand for basic services like public toilets and all that stuff – a demand that local councils just can’t afford to meet.

And this is where the Government is going to have to have more skin in the game if it really wants this open-door policy to reap the economic benefits that it wants.

So yes, ditch the pipedream that New Zealand is only a place for wealthy tourists and sell us to the world and get as many visitors here as you can.

But don’t leave it to locals and their struggling councils to provide all the basic services and facilities that these visitors are going to need once they get here.

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Do you know who’s to blame for the high school teacher shortage we’re hearing about today?

You are.

I am, as well. We’re both to blame.

Because, whether you’re a parent or not, we have done an absolutely brilliant job of putting people off wanting to become a teacher.

And it’s a weird mix of us doing too much of some stuff and too little of other stuff. And the outcome is 346 full-time vacancies unfilled just weeks out from the new school year.

Now I know you might be thinking "oh yeah, we hear this every year from the unions. They take every opportunity to bang on about needing more pay, more resources blah blah blah.”

But it’s not just the unions speaking out.

There’s a principal in the news saying that in the 16 years he’s been in the job, there’s only been one where he’s started the year without enough teachers.

Looks like this could be his second.

So why am I putting the blame on us? Because that’s not what the unions are saying. It’s certainly not what the government is saying, either. As if they would. So why am I saying it?

I’m saying it because parents - and I’m one of them (our three are in their early 20s now) but, yep, I know I’ve been guilty over the years of poking my nose in - probably a bit too much.

Not as badly as other parents - but I’m guilty.

And what we’ve done in the process, is we have piled so many expectations and pressure on teachers that we are driving them nuts.

We think that we deserve one-on-one time with them whenever we want it.

So much so, that some schools have had to put a ban on parents barging into the classroom before or after school to “have a word”.

We’ve been banging on the door, writing emails. The way some parents behave, you could describe it as harassment of teachers.

This is the part of my argument where we have done “too much”, and it's part of the reason why I think we have to carry the blame for people not wanting to be teachers.

Another part of my “too much” argument is the expectations we have placed on teachers and schools to provide not just an education but full-scale social services.

As well as all the moaning about all the holidays they, supposedly, get - and let’s not forget all the tut-tutting over the keep cups about teacher-only days.

Who would want to be a teacher with all that going on? Not me.

As for the “too little” bit —this is where you and I have put people off wanting to be teachers by not doing enough— this is all about our lack of support and advocacy for teachers.

And this is broad. At one end, you’ve got the way people are always far too busy to put their hand up to help out with anything at school.

You’ll know as much as I do that the ones who do are always the same faces, and they get sick of it eventually.

At the other end —on a broader level— we have done an absolutely hopeless job of standing up for our teachers.

And there is an absolutely prime example.

We have quietly sat-by and allowed to happen what I think is the most damaging thing that’s ever been done to our education system - the modern learning environment.

The modern learning environment has been —in my opinion— an absolute disaster. And you and I - we’ve allowed it to happen.

It gets moaned about, but no one ever takes it to the next level.

The fact that teachers have been forced to teach kids in these barn-like settings with tents and bean bags and noise. Again, who would want to be a teacher in that kind of set-up?

I wouldn’t!

But we have allowed the Ministry of Education to force these monstrosities on schools. Sure, we might have had a rant about it to our mates - but that’s all we’ve done. And by stopping there, we have let teachers down big-time.

And by letting teachers down big time by not advocating for them as much as we should —and by placing such unrealistic expectations on them— by doing too much of some stuff and not enough of other stuff - we have done a first-class job of telling people to forget about being teachers.

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There’s a belief we're still yet to reap the benefits of having inflation under control.

Latest Stats NZ figures show the inflation rate for the year to December was 2.2%, unchanged from September.

Inflation is well down on the once-in-a-generation high of 7.3% of just two and a half years ago.

The Herald's Liam Dann told John McDonald we're still yet to see many prices come down.

He says rents are still up for example, but they should be coming down with a struggling property market.

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