Ray Chung has surely scuppered his chances of becoming Wellington's next mayor, hasn't he?

Although, given the way voters in Wellington tend to cast their ballots given their previous form, perhaps not. Chung has sent an email to three of his fellow councillors with the heading ‘A sordid night on the town”, in which he proceeded to pass on a story he heard from a neighbour while out dog walking, trash talking Mayor Tory Whanau. It accused her of participating in an orgy with a couple of young men and taking drugs, and talked about the form of the woman involved, being Tory Whanau, having soft, pendulous breasts.

Whanau released the email to the New Zealand Herald as an example of the dehumanising personal attacks she's experienced during her term as Wellington mayor and part of the reason she's not running for the mayoralty again. She said this sort of behaviour (the sending of gossip to fellow councillors), is unbecoming for a public official, it's creepy, it's gross. If he's going to stay in the mayoral race, he needs to commit to a clean campaign. Whanau, who wants to be elected as a councillor but not mayor this election, provided the email to the Herald saying she wanted voters to see evidence of the abuse she and other female politicians endured.

This is the thing that stuns me: when questioned about the email, Chung said he had no idea if the contents were true. Absolutely none. He did no fact checking, he just found it interesting, thought his fellow councillors would agree. When pressed maybe three times, he thought perhaps he'd say sorry if it wasn't true, but didn't really see anything wrong with what he'd done. He said I passed on exactly what I was told, I'd call it gossip. And I suppose using the internet is just the modern form of whispering in someone's ear at the village fair.

Now the best form of gossip and lying is to feed a story with a grain of truth. Whanau has form in drunken carrying on, it's not a huge leap the way it would be with a teetotalley, happily married young female mayor. Whanau says she can prove she wasn't at this supposed orgy which Chung says took place on New Year's Eve. She was at a function for ambassadors in the city and then went on to a rainbow community party on New Year's Eve. She says she can show that the story is malicious gossip.

The scary thing about this is that people think they can say anything about anybody these days and get away with it. For all the faults of the mainstream media, we are accountable for the things we say and write. So if we get it wrong, we are censored. The records corrected and you know about it. We can certainly have opinions you disagree with, that's different, but if we had come out with a story like that, we could be sued for defamation. And in the past this radio station has been Most radio stations have been, because people take it one step too far, repeat something they've heard because they think it might be interesting. Wrong. It's false. It can be proved to be false, and they're censored, and they have to pay a fine, and they have to apologise and correct the record. I'd love to see how much faith people put in alternative media stories and sources, if they were held to the same level of accountability that we are. The internet is amazing, but it has always been an absolute cesspit of misinformation and lies as well.

You know for a fact that the story about Clarke Gayford and the nanny, Clarke Gayford and the Whangarei court appearance, Peter Davis, John Key, Tory Whanau, all of these public figures, you know, for a fact that it's true because your neighbour's niece went to school with the nanny, or your wife's brother's best friend was in the police force in Kerikeri, used to be and he knows for a fact that the court registrar... It's utter bullshit. Complete and utter BS, but you want to believe it. It feeds into how you perceive these people and what you want to believe about these people, whoever they may be. There's a grain of truth to it. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that it could have happened. And again, that's what makes it all so dangerous. I just don't believe anything until I am stepping over the writhing forms of the people allegedly involved and trying not to stand on their pendulous soft breasts.

I can't just put up a story because I think you might find it interesting, and I think you'll agree with the story, you'll agree with the narrative. You say where's your proof? Where's your evidence? And if I can't provide it, you can sue me for defamation. And that's a jolly good thing.

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Lizards living near the Macraes gold mine in Central Otago run the very real risk of becoming lizard skin boots on the feet of Resources Minister Shane Jones. The self-described Matua is on the warpath because hundreds of workers are at risk of being laid off after a decision by the Department of Conservation to reject an application by the country's largest gold mine owner. Macraes Goldman in the Central Otago region, which is owned by the Canadian company OceanaGold, recently applied for a permit under the Wildlife Act to clear grass and vegetation on its current site in order to expand its operation. Last month, the Department of Conservation declined it, citing insufficient information about how the company would manage the relocation of lizards. Shane Jones is beside himself and while talking with Heather du Plessis Allan this morning on the Mike Hosking Breakfast, he labelled the decision makers in DOC a bunch of quislings.

“These lizards are as common as acne on a teenager. That's the first thing. Secondly, they are scattered throughout the entirety of Otago. Every time a farmer does something on his or her land, they don't need a special wildlife permit. This piece of legislation is actually older than my good self, but the most important thing is, does the public want jobs in Otago? Does the public want $700 million worth of export revenue? I do. And I'm of the view that the decision makers in this case have just taken the public for a ride.”

Well, he's promised he's going to do something about it and he's taking it to cabinet, and he'll override the DOC decision. Quisling, by the way, as a colloquial term for traito Vidkun Quisling was the Norwegian Minister of Defence who collaborated with the Nazis in the Second World War.

This is not the first time man has collided with environment. Remember the powelliphanta augusta snail in Westport? Solid Energy wanted to mine the snail's habitat, and there was a real hue and cry over that. Aren't we lucky that we are a country where people will take to the streets for the protection of snails? The snails were moved to different areas. Some were taken under the protective wing of DOC, and if you were a powelliphanta augustus snail you really did have a better chance in the wild because an oopsie at DOC saw the snails frozen one fateful Labour weekend. They were being stored in a refrigerator to be put into a habitat that suited them. After a few ups and downs, it appears the snails have survived the disruption. Twenty years after they were moved, the population has grown to 1884 with an additional 2195 unhatched eggs, and the species had been observed on camera laying eggs for the first time. It was tough but they adapted and good for them.

The Northern Expressway. Along with building the highway, NX2 —the coalition of companies that was charged with building the expressway— were also charged with building fishways. So inanga, or native white bait, could swim around the culverts and weirs that were required with the expressway. We've heard from your everyday builders and developers who have to count skinks and lizards before they can move earth on a project. In some cases they have to relocate the skinks and lizards. Sometimes they count the skinks and lizards, and the friendly neighbourhood cat reduces their number overnight by one or two. Then there's the taniwha, who've popped up during the construction of the Waikato Expressway and the Light Rail project.

Shane Jones asked the question: do you want lizards or jobs? Do you want a company that's going to get some export earnings in to help us get back on track, or do you not? We're not talking about taking a thundering great excavator and churning up the ground and leaving it a sad and sorry toxic mess. Modern day mining is vastly different to what it used to be. It's not even as if Mcraes said buggar the lizards – they said we will lovingly pick them up and transport them somewhere where they can live like they used to. But DOC said no, that’s not the plan we like. Come on.

When you get an attitude like this from DOC, then it hardens other people's attitudes. People might have said, love a lizard, if they can move them, that'd be great. But when you've got DOC saying no, that plan’s not good enough and they stall, and they ensure that companies have to pay more and more, and that people don't get to sign on to work, and Mcraes/Oceana decide stuff it. They do the sums, they do the number crunching, and they say it's not worth our while to be here and they leave - I don't think in this case that it is the best thing for New Zealand, that the lizards win.

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27-year-old Auckland engineer Shyamal Shah has been sentenced to two years, two months imprisonment for what is believed to be one of the largest public sector thefts on record – a 17-month scheme in which he managed to swindle roughly $1 million from his employer, Watercare.

The court was told yesterday that the theft and deception came about through Shah’s gambling addiction that started at Sky City Casino, then escalated after three men approached him and invited him to a residence where private games were being held. It was a racket where addicts were targeted and given a significant line of credit before payment is demanded, often through coercion. I mean, if we've ever seen any Good Fellas type movies, you've seen it before.

In Shah’s case, the court was told the defendant was shown photos of another man who had been violently assaulted after they didn't pay. So he was hooked, he was reeled in, and he turned a promising career in a promising life into a complete and utter train wreck. He will go to jail, his parents, who had taken a gamble and backed that their son was going to be an exemplary citizen, are financially ruining themselves to try and pay back as much of the money as they possibly can.

This is what a gambling addict looks like, and it comes at the same time as the nation's independent gambling regulator, the Gambling Commission, has issued a damning report into the Ministry of Health's problem gambling section, saying it is impossible to judge whether the services actually reduce gambling harm. The report recommended Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey and Internal Affairs Minister Brook van Velden reject the Ministry of Health request to increase a levy from $76 million to $92 million over the next three years. The levy comes from the gambling industry, which makes sense. A lot of people can gamble and just have, you know, $5 on the nose of a horse, a pretty chestnut at Race 9 at Te Rapa, but others can't, so the industry helps fund problem gamblers, helps fund assistance and help for problem gamblers.

But the Commission’s expert reviewer Doctor David Rees said when it came to the money that has been given to the Ministry of Health to help problem gamblers, we don't know if it's enough. We don't know if it's too much. And that's a point made by a number of people. There's a lack of data, a lack of understanding, we don't know what's working, and we don't know what's not working. Sounds like my hero, the Auditor General John Ryan. He said, I don't know this money's been well spent, there's no track of it, no record of.

So same again, the Ministry of Health gets millions of dollars from the gambling industry to help problem gamblers, does it work? Dunno! Ddn't really know. Matt Doocey said it's not good enough, symptomatic of what happened under the last Government. Doocey said in mental health and addiction services, increased funding had led to no material difference. And it's true, that's exactly what happened under the last Government. We're seeing lots of ads for the TAB right now: “You know the odds, now beat them”. In the pregame build up before the All Blacks there's always a punters report: what the totes paying for which player to score the first try. You can bet on anything and it's being very, very normalised.

As with every addict across every addiction, you start off thinking it's a bit of harmless fun, think you can handle it until you can't, until you've found yourself like Shyamal Shah, in the dock with your promising life and career absolutely ruined. All addicts need help to get the monkeys off their back, but just throwing money to the Ministry of Health and thinking there we go job done, is not good enough. They have to show that the millions of dollars they have been granted have done some good.

And this hasn't come out of the blue. In 2019, they were asked to account for the money. They didn't. In 2022, they were told to carry out a major strategic review of its problem gambling strategy and they didn't. And then they had the temerity to come back and ask for more money. Can we have another $11 million? No. If you want $92 million, then you have to show what you're spending it on, not just for the sake of the money and for the sake of proper accounting, but for the sake of the addicts. It's so hard for addicts to know they have a problem before it's too late. I'm talking about any addiction. And when you reach out for help, you need that help to be there.

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I've steered clear of much of the sentencing changes proposed by the Government because it's a topic that we do canvas often. The Government campaigned on toughening up on crime and on criminals, and so far they seem to be delivering, so you know, leave them to it. But Paul Goldsmith's proposal that the government could introduce more minimum or mandatory sentences for crimes, meaning less power for the judges and more for the government, couldn't come at a better time as far as I'm concerned.

Currently, when penalties are established for different offences, lawmakers normally set out a “maximum” sentence. For example, the Government's newly announced coward punch offence has maximum sentences of either 8 or 15 years imprisonment, depending on the situation. Judges then have discretion to take into account aggravating or mitigating circumstances. So that's the maximum that can be set. A judge can't go right, that was just outrageous, that's 20 years for you - not allowed to do that, there's a mandatory term.

Late last month the government changes came into effect, capping sentence discounts that judges can apply. So in most cases now the most they can apply is 40%. If a judge thinks that would be massively unjust, they can exceed this discount cap but that will be the exception, not the rule. Now the Government's looking to introduce more minimum sentences so the judges can't start at a laughably low detention rate or give a remarkably soft sentence. There will be a minimum to which that can apply.

So for those who think that's an attack on the judiciary, Labour, or for those like Tamatha Paul, who think this is an attack on the poor, how do you defend these sentences? The 17-year-old knife wielding rapist who had robbed two men at knife point before raping a young woman at Albert Park in Auckland who was coming home after celebrating her 21st birthday. He raped her, threatened to kill her boyfriend. Her life has never been the same since.

The defence wanted home detention for a vicious rape at knife point. The judge said oh no, but am going to give you a 77% discount, for his youth, his guilty plea, no priors, and his attempt at rehabilitation. In the sentencing notes, the judge also seemed to take into account that he was criminally stupid. He was an idiot. Like, as in the old-fashioned version of idiot, barely able to string three words together in any language. So she gave him a 77% discount from her starting point. He ended up with two years, two months, and a week for a knife attack and rape and threatening to kill. And oh, sorry, forgot about robbing at knife point the two men earlier. On appeal, Peter Kosetatino's sentence was three years and 11 months. Again, no, no, no, a rape at knife point for a young woman whose life will never be the same? No.

Drunk driver Jake Hamlin who killed an innocent young woman? 12 months home detention. He's halfway through home and laughing. Quite literally.

The couple who murdered 4-year-old Ashton Cresswell – they were jointly charged with manslaughter. There were only the two of them there, the mother and her partner. Both of them stayed schtum. That's all you have to do when you're a baby murderer, you just shut up. That feral tart protected her partner at the expense of her little boy. The police’s hands are tied. They were jointly charged with manslaughter because nobody else could have done it. It was one of them. Police couldn't prove either one of them because both of them were protecting each other, so they pled guilty to reduce charges of neglect. And so for murdering that little boy and then staying schtum, his mother, in name only, got three years. And the partner got four years for basically torturing a child. So many children are being tortured right now, tortured and killed, and for that you get 3 years and four years.

Is it any wonder why the Government is interfering with the judiciary? Those are three good examples among thousands, thousands, and thousands of why the government has to interfere with the judiciary.

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Labour leader Chris Hipkins says speeding up the justice system is a priority.

Recent announcements by the Justice Minister include bigger fines for trespassing and harsher penalties for coward punches and assaulting first responders.

Hipkins told Kerre Woodham unlike National, he wouldn't spend the first 18 months in power overturning the last Government's legislation.

He says there’s been too much flip-flopping around.

One of the things Hipkins wants to prioritise is the courts – saying that they have to deal with the inefficiencies in the system, and that justice delayed is justice denied.

Chris Hipkins says Jacinda Ardern will be weighing up safety before deciding whether to return to New Zealand for our Covid inquiry.

Ardern could be among key decision-makers expected to be asked to speak later this month.

Hipkins told Kerre Woodham there are risks to her security in New Zealand.

He says they aren't idle threats, and it's legitimate for her to consider the danger to herself and her family.

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To start the morning, I wondered about looking at the fairness - or otherwise - of the corporate tax rate.

The Finance Minister, according to a New Zealand Herald story, has quietly asked Inland Revenue to look at the appropriateness of the tax settings being applied to banks. Nicola Willis confirmed to the Herald a wide range of options is being considered to ensure the major banks are paying their fair share of tax.

She wants advice back ahead of next year's Budget, which is expected to be delivered just months before the 2026 general election. She said, “our work to enhance banking competition is wide-ranging and as part of this of sought advice on whether the major banks are paying their fair share of tax,”.

I've been interested, she went on, in how New Zealand's bank tax regime compares with Australia and elsewhere, particularly in light of the significant profits Australian banks make from Kiwi customers.

No decisions have been made, recommendations have not yet been taken to Cabinet, so she's not going to comment on specific proposals at this stage.

I would have thought if the company tax rate was a set amount and the banks are paying that, then they're paying their fair share of tax.

I was listening to Heather talking to Claire Matthews, the banking expert from Massey, this morning.

Claire Matthews said the way she thought it might work would be the corporate tax rate would be lowered for all corporates except the major trading banks. Everybody else will be lowered, but banks, so they wouldn't in effect be punished, they just wouldn't benefit from any changes to this tax regime.

But as Claire Matthews pointed out, banks already contribute a significant amount to the New Zealand economy.

They pay a very large portion, something like 20% of total tax, total corporate tax in New Zealand. So they're paying a huge amount of tax, so if you drop the corporate tax rate but keep the bank’s tax at a higher level, you, the Government could manage to avoid the actual impact on their tax take.

I think there's a real danger here. Are they going to suddenly make supermarkets pay more because they, too are Government’s favourite whipping boys and girls? Why are they being singled out?

Sure, I would love it if I didn't have to pay the house price twice over, but I understand that when you're lending money to individuals and to businesses, there is risk involved with that so you have to pay for that risk.

I don't imagine the banks would just close their doors, decamp and head back over the Tasman, there's still money to be made. But I just don't understand why banks would be asked to pay more while the rest of corporate New Zealand pays less.

I don't want a bank to fail. It's not in the country's best interest for a financial institution to go under. We've seen the damage done when the BNZ had to be bailed out, and then the different finance companies were bailed out, why on Earth would we want to see banks fail if they're paying their fair share of tax?

I have no skin in the game other than a hefty mortgage, which I would love to see reduced, but I don't necessarily see it's the bank's fault that they are the ones who profit from lending money.

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There are a lot of things parents can teach children without schools needing to get involved. Basic hygiene, reading, physical education, even driving – parents should and could teach their children these skills. And I know schools already have a lot to be dealing with as regards to the needs of our children in their classroom, they've got a lot of changes to the curriculum happening. But one area where I would totally jump on my soapbox and say the schools need to be teaching is civics education.

It's come to the forefront because while the NSW Government understands the importance of young people having a working knowledge of democracy and the legal system, it announced last year that studying civics would be compulsory in primary schools from 2027. Critics are saying that the subject is too important to be included within a wider syllabus. At the moment, what the NSW Government is doing is putting civics in with human society and its wider environments syllabus, along with other things. Critics argue that civics is so important it should have its own standalone status, with its own standalone support material, and specialist teachers, and the like.

I couldn't really agree more, because when you look at everything we talk about on this show, when you look at the subject matters that are dear to our hearts, the genesis of all of the issues that come up comes down to decisions made by people voted by us or people choosing not to vote. So a small number of people get to choose individuals who will make decisions that impact us all, be it local bodies or government.

Or we're talking about issues because decisions are made by people who don't understand the social contract and what it means to be a citizen, and that's what civics is all about: understanding that when you are a citizen within a civilized society you have rights certainly, but you have duties and obligations. So if there was a greater understanding of civics, a greater understanding and appreciation of what it means to be involved in a democracy, a greater understanding of the way our governments work, both central and local government, the way our laws work, we would have a more civilised society.

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A new tool can now estimate how fast a person is aging.

University of Otago scientists have found a way to use an MRI scan of the brain to quantify the rate of biological aging of middle-aged people to forecast risks of dementia, chronic disease, and death in older adulthood.

The technology was developed using data from the Dunedin Study, a decades long health project tracking more than 1,000 people born in the early 70’s.

Dunedin Study director Professor Moana Theodore joined Kerre Woodham to break down the findings of the study and how the tool works.

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