James Meager

You didn't mention Epstein, by the way, the king. There was some expectation, some pressure on him to do something around the Epstein thing, but I don't know why they did that, because the monarchy doesn't deal in that sort of business, and they're above all of that. rightly or wrongly anyway so here's the here's the problem with what happened so anyway sam did all the digging and he got all the information together and we had what we thought was was was a story i mean the the political editor of the state broadcaster allegedly saying what she did is unacceptable I think in most people's minds you can debate among yourselves whether you think that's a sackable offence or not at that particular point we went to TVNZ TVNZ threatened to sue us so we got the big broad base fat letter from the lawyers going and it was one of those very wide ranging letters you get from corporate lawyers basically encompassing everything so it doesn't matter what you say when you say why you say how you say it they're going to go go you for something so it was one of those letters I personally don't worry about letters like that too much but corporate lawyers do and the corporate lawyers at this place what was that what's the term they use in legal circles it had a chilling effect So perhaps some of the enthusiasm for the story, and I make no passing judgment on this other than to say I was disappointed, but the enthusiasm waned somewhat for the story upon the receipt of the legal letter. Now another aspect of the story you can ask yourself is is it wise of the state broadcaster to use lawyers to threaten other broadcasting entities that have what, as it turns out, is a perfectly legitimate story? So should we have gone a bit cold on it ourselves? Personally, no, but we did, and you can ask NZME about that another time if you want to. So anyway, that's where it was at. The good news is that in this modern day and age, it was always going to come out in some way, shape or form. Now, to the actual incident itself, is it sackable? That's for TVNZ. TVNZ is still saying they don't comment on... employment matters, be that as it may. But the problem they face is several-fold at the moment, one of which came in the form of a complaint. that involved the TVNZ gallery in dealing with Stuart Smith last week, one of which has come about maybe tied in, maybe not, with the Prime Minister no longer appearing on their breakfast programme on a weekly basis, and of course the general reputational damage. And I would, from a personal point of view, and this is just my opinion, nobody else's, the real problem that they have these days, and the gallery in general, is with their performance, not what goes on in offices, things like this.

The I mentioned Hawks Bay earlier on sort of tied in with this. I got some numbers out of Australia yesterday as regards Amazon and so 5 billion is what Australians spend on Amazon. 25% increase on the year before, so 25% more. So one, they've got plenty of money and two, they're piling it into Amazon, which has been in Australia since the latter part of 2017. And basically that's all come from market share from other retailers. So it's all shifted to Amazon. Sales from Amazon.com.au now equals 2.33 billion. But that's less than half of their total revenue in Australia, the streaming service, the television, the shopping membership program, 632.8 million, which is up 32%. Do we have the shopping membership program? I don't know anything about the shopping membership program, but they do anyway, and they love it too. Fees from third-party merchants are up 36% to 1.14 billion. The fastest growing were the ads, search video results, 62% up. send up to $392 million so we cannot spend enough money on things like Amazon. Now, here's some good news around the job market. This has been done by Rabobank and their farm remuneration report. So life on farm is lucrative. So a farm worker... Average wages increased 3%, which is about what inflation is. They look at 13 different roles on-farm. Average wage is over $72,000. In fact, it's heading towards $73,000. Dairy farm assistance, the most common job on-farm, 5% annual increase. You're earning $63,500. Average annual salaries have jumped 13% between 22 and 24. So the money's there. And of course, farming's doing well, or most of farming's doing well. Doesn't include the other range of benefits that most people get on. On farm, you get some vehicle usage, bit of meat, bit of firewood, bit of phone, bit of power allowance. Meets worth a fortune. They hand you a couple of steaks, you're off and running. There are not many, and this is the key to it, there's not many roles where you can leave school. And pop into $65,000 to $70,000 a year. Arable farm machinery operators up 30%. You're getting paid $82,600. That's why I was talking this time yesterday about buying a digger. Because there's good money in it. So an arable farm machinery operator, which I assume is a digger or something similar, 30% increase. Can't argue with it.

It is, and it's partly because drones are becoming bigger, more complicated, more widespread, and actually they've got a big use in the agricultural sector. So the rules, while they were probably fit for purpose when they first came in, haven't quite kept up. We want to make sure we're not strangling particularly farmers and red tape because with the cost of spraying and applying fertiliser and fuel these days, it'd be good for them to have some technologies and tools to be able to do that more effectively, increase their productivity.

So generally the money is to consolidate the debt that they already have and provide some stability and I know Mike I know you weren't the biggest fan of this when it first came out but it was important to provide some stability to the sector before the fuel crisis hit. We've been able to do that a little bit. The pain's not over for the air master facing now quite significant fuel prices, some of them have had their fuel bills doubled. So this will go a little bit of way to stabilise the sector. to sector and provide them some relief we're very confident that we'll get it all back but of course we'll continue to look after taxpayers dollars

Yeah, I can understand why some people are questioning some of the decisions the government has made. I think when you analyse a lot of what's been going on, you can find sort of valid reasons why certain parts of the public or the population maybe thought things were changing too quickly or were changing without their ability to have a say on it. So that's been reflected in what the government's tried to do. I haven't necessarily found that difficult. My view has always been, you know, I come from probably more of a background. background where if you if you want to do something to improve your life or to change something in life or in your community um the best way to do that is to do that yourself and so I think generations of people have shown that through language that that's that's where the revitalisation has come and I also acknowledge that the government has a role to play in that but also the the democratic process means you have to reflect what I guess people in the public are

Both, it depends on the issue, right. So if you're talking at the core treaty settlement level, I mean Ngai Tahu and Tainui were the flag bearers in this space and you've got to recognise the risk, I guess, they took in trying to lead that process. And all of those settlements have been legislated and from memory I can't think of anything that wasn't passed unanimously. Now that is us as a parliament saying that we are agreeing and putting this into law and giving it the force of law as to what our rights and obligations now are. So at that treaty settlement level, certainly it's a partnership where the law requires. And then there will be other levels around engagement where different property rights or different interests are engaged and you'll have different levels of engagement in the same way that you would have with a lot of other communities or neighbourhoods or individuals.