She's been a tough few months for Northland businesses and residents.

First, we had the Brynderwyns closing. State Highway 1 over the Brynderwyn Hills is finally set to open ahead of Matariki weekend after 17 weeks and three days. Lots of diversions, lots and lots of trucks on roads that where they really, really shouldn't be, and the crews have been working as hard as they can, but it's been slip after slip after slip. They've been trying to clear those and strengthen the road and shore up the hills.

And then yesterday, we had the massive power outage. Nearly 100,000 people spent the day without electricity in Northland after a transmission tower linking the region to the rest of the country fell over. And like, quite literally, fell over - collapsed. Power was restored to most of the region last night, but consumers were asked to conserve electricity and warned that their hot water cylinders would remain off while the amount of energy getting into the area was limited. Transpower said this morning that while power has now been restored to the majority of residential customers, full power would not be restored until over the weekend. Having a place in the Hokianga I'm used to power outages occurring, you know relatively often, but they're usually sporadic, they’re usually easily resolved. It's a bit of fun camping until the power comes back on, not so much fun when you're a business that is utterly dependent on power.

The transmission tower collapse, which happened in Glorit, about 45kms west of Warkworth, happened at the same time as another circuit connecting Northland to the grid was down for maintenance. So basically, the whole region was completely and utterly on its own. Northland MP Grant McCullum said this highlights how fragile the infrastructure in Northland is and he said it was the very last thing that Northlanders needed, which was a sentiment echoed by Darren Fischer, North Chamber CEO, Chamber of Commerce.

“Spoke to some of our more regional business associations yesterday and how they described it is, this not the knockout blow for a lot of small businesses, it's certainly a standing 8 count. You know it could be very well one of the things that just keep piling on top of some of these small employers you know.”

Yeah, it's tough. Thank heavens the Brynderwyns road will be open, thanks to NZTA, for Matariki weekend to give the businesses a much-needed boost.

But is it just the nature of the beast? Is it the nature of nature, if you will? There's not much you can do when there are massive landslips, or is there? Should there have been more investment in shoring up the sides of the hills and strengthening the roads before you absolutely had to? Have we been putting infrastructure on the back burner right around the country, but for far, far too long? Putting it off where we can, generation after generation. This is not on one government; this isn't even really on one generation. Have we been taking infrastructure for granted? And now we're seeing the result of that. I mean Northlands suffering at the moment, but there'll be other regions of that you can be sure.

When you are utterly dependent really on one road, one major highway in and out for the transportation of goods and the transportation of services, when there are any frailties or when nature decides that it's going to have its say, there's not much you can do. You have to cobble together detours and patch in highways. When you are utterly dependent on one or two sources of power when one goes, you’re stuffed.

Are we too small to be able to have even a 98% confident reliance on our infrastructure? Are we simply too small? Our population mass is too small. We certainly don't have the money right now, but then what were we doing in the previous years? Or is it just Northland that is the forgotten child? The one who's been left behind while the rest of the country has agitated for more power, more resources, more money. I think there'd be plenty of regions that would argue they've been forgotten, so I don't think that's the answer. Northlanders might feel a bit bereft having been promised bridges that didn't turn up. Having been left pretty much isolated from the rest of the country with the Brynderwyns closed. Is it just the nature of New Zealand's terrain, or has it been poor decision making from those who should know better?

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The Blues and Chiefs will be facing off before a packed-out Eden Park for the Super Rugby Finals.

The game kicks off at 7:05pm this Saturday, tickets for the match selling out within a couple of hours.

Former All Blacks coach and Blues Board Member John Hart told Kerre Woodham that to have a full sellout crowd within a few hours of tickets going on sale shows that there’s a lot of enthusiasm for the game.

He said that there’s been a lot of negativity surrounding New Zealand rugby this year, and people have forgotten what’s happening on the field.

The changes have made a fantastic product, Hart said, and he thinks people have recognized that this game is something very special.

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Environmental awareness and the risk of dolphin bothering seems to have been behind SailGP’s decision to withdraw its racing from Lyttelton next year and move the whole kit and caboodle to Auckland.

You may remember they looked at Auckland but there was inability to provide the kind of spectator stands that Russell Coutts wanted, So off to Lyttelton they went, with the caveat that you have to be mindful it's a dolphin sanctuary, and if the dolphins turn up then racing has to stop. Sure, fine, everybody agreed. Then back in March, the opening day of racing was called off due to a dolphin sighting on the course. And while the second day of racing was able to go ahead without a hitch, and according to some commentators served up one of the best days of racing in the league's history, Russell Coutts said no, that's it. We can't be stopping every two seconds. It's not ideal. It's a beautiful amphitheatre, great racing, but if the Dolphins are going to be stopping racing every two seconds, we can't be coming back.

Among Sail GP athletes Lyttelton Harbour was voted as the league's best location to sail. It was an anonymous poll amongst the athletes are following their event in Dubai, late in 2023. Great Britain strategist Hannah Mills said there were pros and cons for whether the league should return to the venue in ‘25 after the way things played out. She said it's the most amazing place to sail. It's really beautiful, so many people came to watch, the conditions were incredible. For a sailor, it's perfect, but we have to be more conscious around the places that we go, the effects that we have and the traces that we leave, said Hannah Mills, the British strategist.

And that's the big thing behind Sail GP. They talk about being champions for change, they talk about raising awareness of conservation ideals through their sport. Better sport, better planet, so you can't be mowing over dolphins while you’re promoting that sort of ethos within your sport. And a lot of the sailors within the sport would feel very much the same way. Sure, let us sail, but we don't want to cause harm while we do it.

So, Auckland it is. And that must mean the issues around the Wynyard quarter have been resolved because when Auckland events manager Nick Mills announced last year that Sail GP wouldn't be coming to Auckland, he said that they'd worked really hard with Russell Coops and the Sail GP team to find a way to hold the event the way Russell wants to hold it. That is, in the middle of the harbour, with a stand on either side of the harbour and he said it's just not possible to do it this year because the land that Coutts wanted to use for the stand was where the old tank farm used to be. And although the tanks have been removed there's been contamination and it hasn't been cleared to be used for any other purpose. So presumably, the situation is that Russell Coutts and Sail GP have said no, Lyttelton Harbour’s too hard. Too many dolphins. Too much stress on the environmentally aware sailors and the environmentally aware landlubbers, terrified that Dolphins will be hit, so we'll move it up to Auckland, where presumably there are also dolphins, but not as many. It's not a sanctuary. And the land will have been remediated so that Russell Coutts can have the course exactly as he wishes. And let's face it, he who pays, says.

If Russell Coutts wants to bring a whole lot of money, a whole lot of television coverage, a whole lot of good juju to a town or a city, he can say this is the way I want it. And if you don't like it, he'll go somewhere else.

So, I'd love to get your thoughts on this - could it have worked at Lyttelton? Was there good will? Or was the fact that the course was in the middle of a dolphin sanctuary, just silly and unworkable? I mean, it looked like a beautiful natural amphitheatre and certainly was well supported by the locals. It's a great race. It's a great initiative. It's a great idea. Good people are involved, good people are supporting it. If not Auckland where?

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The news New Zealand is out of a technical recession isn't necessarily cause for celebration.

Stats NZ figures show GDP rose 0.2% in the three months to March and 0.2% in the year to March.

But Herald Business Editor Liam Dann told Kerre Woodham that we could still see a series of further per capita contractions over the next few quarters.

He says if we don't end up back in a technical recession, things could go backwards in another quarter due to the crunch starting to bite on interest rates.

The Reserve Bank says the growth outlook for the rest of this year is slightly more positive.

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New Zealand’s health and safety performance seems to be dire still.

In 2013, an independent taskforce identified three key failures in the country’s health and safety system in the wake of the Pike River tragedy.

Eleven years later, Newsroom reveals that despite knowing these faults, not much has changed.

Legislation continues to be poorly implemented with insufficient follow through, the primary regulator is still under resourced, and there is still poor coordination across the agencies tasked with injury prevention, they said.

Mike Cosman, Chair of the New Zealand Institute of Safety Management, told Kerre Woodham that he was part of that taskforce, and sadly only about half the job was done.

He said that whilst other countries we would normally compare ourselves to —Australia, the UK, Europe— have continued to improve, our performance has staggered along.

It’s not getting worse, Cosman said, but it’s certainly not getting better at the speed that you would hope.

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Boosting Parliament security is a work in progress.

MPs have shared experiences of threats and intimidation, and some say the Parliament protests were a catalyst for greater concerns.

The Speaker's looking into the possibility of giving Parliament security guards arrest powers.

Security Association Chief Executive Gary Morrison told Kerre Woodham that having Police support is key.

He said that security guards act as a visible deterrent and can keep situations safe.

Morrison says there's not support across the board for letting security guards detain people, as that requires appropriate training which comes at a cost.

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Let's start with the announcement yesterday from Chris Bishop allowing people to build small granny flats without requiring consent. It's followed through, the coalition government, on its promise to cut red tape around the resource consent process. The announcement was made yesterday, and they said it will be easier for people to put a granny flat in their backyard without having to go through the hoohah of a costly consent process.

Housing Minister Chris Bishop said there are already some councils in the country that allow for that but there's a lack of consistency, so some councils do, some don't. Thus, the proposal for a national environmental standard which would apply nationwide, and which could come into force more quickly.

Winston Peters said yesterday that unlocking the space in the backyards of families will open the door to a new way of living. Oldies, you might want to bring them closer to you if they're no longer able to live in their own home, but not ready for a rest home, a granny flat out the back would be perfect. University aged kids who want a little bit of independence but don't want to move away from home. You know the drill.

However, New Zealand Certified Builders CEO Malcolm Fleming, who spoke to Early Edition this morning, sounded a note of caution. He says removing consents does take away safeguards.

“What it also boils down to is whether a homeowner wishes to save the cost of a building consent, which MBIE is indicating their documents sits between $2000 and $5000 range on a $ 350K build, while also removing the ongoing safeguard of having the council share responsibility when build failures may arise in the future, and some homeowners may see as a viable trade off, others may not.”

Yes, Malcolm, sure, I would love to know when any council ever around the country has said, oh my goodness, my bad. We shouldn't have given that consent here. Let us fix it at no cost to you. We'll do it immediately. The safeguards he's talking about, what exactly are they? When you’ve applied for resource consent, do they say no no no, don't do that, you're going to be in a world of trouble. Or do they give you the consent and then when things go pear shaped, they say sorry, we shouldn't have given it to you, we'll repair it. I can't really see how that has safeguarded many builders in the past. I'd love to know if that is if that is the case.

I've never tried to build anything, for very good reason. Anytime I've done renovations on the house we went through our project manager and builders, and it worked a treat, there were no problems whatsoever. So I can see it working for our family later down the track though as the little ones grow into teenagers. I can imagine them colonising my downstairs and Nana being booted out of the two-story apartment I’m in and plonked into a wee granny flat out on the back section. But can you see it working for you?

And I'm really interested because there's been a bit of pushback through texts, through emails from people saying that consent process is necessary. I wouldn't have thought it was for a small dwelling out the back. I thought this was the very thing that people were railing against; the nanny state interfering. But a number of people are saying no, it really does provide a valuable safeguard, so I would very much like to hear from those who know far more than I do about this.

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