At least they’re doing something. But I don’t rate the chances of it working.

That’s how I’m feeling about the Government’s declaration of war on methamphetamine, with this new plan that will see spy agencies working with customs and the defence force to target ships carrying drugs in the Pacific.

It's also going to work with ports and the shipping industry.

The feature of the plan that I like most is this $30 million increase in funding for addiction services. Because, as the Drug Foundation is saying, we can’t arrest our way out of the meth problem.

Sarah Helm is executive director and she says help for people caught up in meth addiction has been significantly under-funded for many years.

She says: “It’s clear to everyone that we can’t arrest our way out of this issue. Spending on treatment and harm reduction is also a better investment of taxpayer money than criminalising people, because it results in savings downstream in health, justice and social costs.”

And we know about the cost - $19.4 million a week. That’s what the National Drug Intelligence Bureau estimates is the value of the harm caused by methamphetamine use every week in New Zealand.

That’s the cost of things like people ending up in hospital, dying - all the social harm. Just under $20 million a week.

The Government’s plan also includes a four-year advertising campaign to educate people about the dangers of meth use.

Which I’m not convinced will be effective. Because everyone knows how bad meth is already - and still we’re using more of it than we ever have.

It's been about 25 years since methamphetamine - as we know it - really took off in New Zealand. And it’s turned out to be a great market for the suppliers.

Some numbers I’ve seen the police refer to is how someone can bring-in 600 kilos of the stuff for a couple of million dollars, sell it and make a profit of around $120 million.

So who is going to turn their back on that kind of opportunity?

But, even though I don’t see it changing things greatly, good on the Government for trying something.

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Slightly ironic, don’t you think, that on the day people up and down the country are turning up at work and school wearing their gumboots for Gumboot Friday, we’ve got Lifeline saying it can’t keep running on the smell of an oily rag and has to cut back on services.

Which means no one answering the phone or replying to text messages between midnight and 7am.

Call them then and you’ll get a message saying you’ve reached them out of hours and to call back later.

Which is not how Lifeline has done things for the past 60-odd years. It’s become known, hasn’t it, as a 24/7 option for people needing help on the mental health front night and day.

And you’ve got to say that if a service has lasted more than 60 years and gets the number of calls for help that it gets and genuinely helps the number of people that it helps, then they know what they’re doing and what they’re doing is valuable and needed.

Needed not just 17 hours a day, but needed 24 hours a day. And the numbers show it.

In the year to June, Lifeline responded to more than 40,000 calls, 182,000 text messages, and created 4736 safety plans for people in need.

Break that down and that’s about 110 phone calls every day, 365 days a year. About 500 text messages every day, 365 days a year. And, on average, that’s 12 safety plans written for people every day of the year.

It’s the 12 safety plans every day that shows why Lifeline is such gold. Because, when someone is at the point of needing a safety plan, they are really desperate aren’t they?

Shaun Greaves is chief executive of Presbyterian Support Northern, which runs Lifeline. He’s saying today: “Lifeline saves lives every week and remains a critical frontline service New Zealand's suicide prevention network.

“Without immediate government support, Lifeline’s ability to deliver the critical service New Zealand desperately needs is a serious concern.”

So, let’s say the Government did come to Lifeline’s rescue – how much would the taxpayer be up for?

Two million dollars a year. That’s the funding gap that is forcing Lifeline to cut back on services and ditch its overnight operation.

This is at the same time as the Government, through Tourism NZ, is spending $6 million getting the Michelin Star people to come over here to eat at our fancy restaurants and see if they're worthy of being ranked up there with the best restaurants in the world.

The Government spending $6 million on restaurant reviewers and not spending $2 million on Lifeline is nothing short of moral bankruptcy.

Part of the problem is NZ First and its non-negotiables, because it said before the last election that it would fund Mike King’s Gumboot Friday. That’s why Winston Peters was crowing after last year’s Budget when Gumboot Friday was given $24 million in funding.

Which really must stick in Lifeline’s craw when you consider the difference $2 million would make to its service, let alone the difference it would make to the people who need Lifeline.

Especially the people who need it between midnight and 7am, but whose calls and messages won’t be responded to.

“You’ve reached us out of hours” is the last thing Lifeline wants to be saying to people. And it’s the last thing desperate people need to hear.

But, unless the Government does something, that’s what’s going to happen.

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A reminder mental health crises don't follow timetables.

Long-time support service Lifeline will now go unanswered between midnight and 7am.

It's asking the Government for help after reducing hours because it has a $2 million annual shortfall.

Labour's Reuben Davidson told John MacDonald help's needed at all hours and mental health crises don't work office hours.

Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says support is available elsewhere, with other helplines.

He told MacDonald that they set an extra $9 million aside for telehealth lines in the 2025 Budget, but it’s up to Health NZ to make the decisions on who to fund.

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There are two types of people in this world.

There are the ones who have no qualms calling in sick, when they’re not. The ones who feel no guilt at all pulling a sickie. And it seems there is no shortage of them, with this report out today saying that New Zealand workers are taking more sick leave, costing the economy $4 billion.

Then you’ve got the other type, who only use their sick leave if they really, really have to. And I’m in that camp.

If I ever have to have a sick day, I hate it. I know “hate” is a strong word, but I don’t like it.

I was crook a few weeks back and needed a couple of days off and hated it. Same when I was unwell at one point last year. Hated it. Not because I was unwell, but because I was off.

And I’ve always felt that way. I don’t know if it’s because I feel like I’m letting people down or feeling bad for being a no-show. Or fear of missing out. Or good old Catholic guilt.

I don’t know what it is, but that’s just me.

So don’t go blaming me for these new numbers out today, showing that we are taking way more sick leave than we used to. Because I’m not one of your “pull a sickie” types.

And maybe that’s why, at various points during my working life, I’ve looked a bit sideways at some people who seem to take sickies at the drop of a hat.

The Southern Cross Workplace Wellness report out today is blaming the increased number of sick days on the Labour government for increasing sick leave entitlements from five days to 10 days.

Health experts aren’t so sure about that. They say Covid has made it unacceptable to go to work unwell and there are a lot more viruses around.

But I think it’s inevitable that if more sick leave is available there’ll be people who will take the mickey.

The report is based on 2024 data and says the number of sick days taken last year —if you add them all together— was 13 million. Up from a combined total of 10 million in 2022.

The average number of sick days for manual workers was 7-and-a-half days and for non-manual workers it was just under six days. That's probably no surprise, given the chance of someone doing a manual job getting physically injured and needing time off work.

The report also says workers in the public sector are having more sick days than people in the private sector. That’s probably not surprising either. Because, from my own personal experience, the public sector seems to be a lot more forgiving or encouraging of people to take sick days.

Either way, people are calling-in sick more than they used to. Does that mean we are sicker or slacker?

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On Saturday night I was in Lyttelton for a gig and saw a guy sleeping on the bench outside the local supermarket, which took me a little bit by surprise.

Maybe I need to get across to Lyttelton more often.

But that’s the kind of thing we will see way more of if the Government goes ahead with this idea of banning homeless people from congregating and sleeping rough in central business districts.

Because instead of being an answer, it just raises another question: where would they go?

We know where they’d go. The suburbs. They wouldn’t go away. And even though I can’t stand being asked for money all the time when I walk through town, some sort of CBD ban isn’t the solution.

It would start in Auckland apparently and eventually be implemented elsewhere around the country.

This hasn’t come from the Government itself, which is being all mealy-mouthed about it. It’s come from Newstalk ZB's senior political correspondent, Barry Soper. He says the Associate Housing Minister, Tama Potaka, has been talking to community housing providers and has suggested to them that such a law is on its way.

Now I’m a realist and I know that we are never going to get rid of homelessness. That’s because there are so many things that lead to someone not having a roof over their head.

And I reckon most of us are only two or three steps away from being homeless ourselves.

It wouldn’t take that many setbacks in our life before we looked up one day and realised we were sleeping under a blanket on Hereford Street or Queen Street.

But banning rough sleepers from downtown areas is not the answer because what happens when the rough sleepers start moving into the suburbs?

I know the Government will say “aww, we’re not just kicking them out, we’re providing the old wraparound services.”

But this isn’t a solution, it’s just moving the problem elsewhere. And, if I had to choose where in town the rough sleepers should be, give me the CBD any day.

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Mike Hosking’s interview this morning with reinstated Silver Ferns coach Dame Noeline Taurua could only have gone one of two ways.

She could have spilled the beans. Or she could have danced around the legalities of a gagging order.

She could have spilled the beans and made Netball NZ look like a bunch of incompetents. Or she could have played it safe.

Funny thing is, she didn’t spill the beans - but still managed to make Netball NZ look like a bunch of incompetents, when she said she was never informed why she was stood down and that there was no investigation into the claims made about her.

That was the point where the interview was getting really curious and then, bang, she was being ushered away to a TV interview and had to end the call - promising to call back later.

It was probably the point too where text messages full of exclamation marks started flying between the honchos at Netball NZ.

Prior to that, Dame Noeline had said to Mike that she felt somewhat vindicated being reinstated.

She said she was elated to be back but described the last few months as being “very horriffic”.

Dame Noeline also confired to Mike that she was constrained in terms of what she could say. She said she could have taken legal action to get her job back - because she believes most of the players support her - but she didn’t want Netball NZ money and taxpayer money being blown on lawyers.

If I was a suspicious person, I would say that Dame Noeline and her PR minder realised she might have crossed the line talking about the lack of an explanation and the lack of an investigation, and that’s why she ended the call.

But I did check the TV and she was on-screen a short time after she spoke with Mike.

Either way, I think Netball NZ is looking worse today than it has during this whole saga.

To stand down its head coach without telling her why and without conducting any sort of investigation screams “Mickey Mouse” to me.

And shows why chief executive Jennie Wyllie couldn’t explain last week why Dame Noeline was back.

This has turned out to be more of a cluster than we thought.

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Buckingham Palace has announced that King Charles will remove all of his brother, Prince Andrew's, titles.

The statement from Buckingham Palace related the announcement to the allegations of sexual abuse by the late Virginia Giuffre.

Andrew Mountbatten Windsor's title will not be immediately stripped as UK Correspondent Gavin Grey said the process of removing his titles "will take some time".

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Ever since the 1930s, when American soldiers were based all around the world, people in many countries have been antsy about foreigners getting what appears to them to be special treatment or privileges.

The phrase people used back in the day about the US soldiers was something along the lines of them being overdressed, overpaid, oversexed and over here.

And the Government seems to be tapping into the same kind of sentiment with this crackdown on employers not following the rules when they want to hire workers from overseas.

That some employers are going straight to taking-on migrant workers without even trying to find locals to do the work first. Which they’re supposed to do or required to do.

Immigration Minister Erica Stanford is saying today that, if employers don’t follow the rules and don’t prioritise hiring New Zealanders, then they can forget about being allowed to hire anyone from overseas ever again.

She says, since we started giving out accredited work visas to migrant workers three years ago, there are 20,000 more unemployed New Zealanders.

“We have New Zealanders who are desperate for jobs and they need to be given the first opportunity for those."

Which I think will go down like a cup of the old proverbial with some employers, who will say they should be allowed to employ whoever they want from wherever they want.

And that’s a view I agree with.

It’s something they’ve been pushing back against for years. But where the Government’s current concern stems from, is the number of employers who aren’t telling Work & Income that they’re on the lookout for staff. When they should be.

That’s because they’re not even interested in hiring locals and just want migrant workers.

Erica Stanford says more than one-in-six employers just want to employ migrants without considering local workers.

From the perspective of someone who is unemployed and needing work, I can see how that would be frustrating.

But does that mean that we should be forcing employers to give locals work over people from overseas?

It’s a bit rich of the Government to say that we need to turn the education system on its head so young New Zealanders can grow up and be ready to work anywhere in the world; but then, when it comes to people from other countries coming to work here, we go all protectionist on it.

Employers themselves certainly think they should be free to hire whoever they want. They’ve been saying that since 2016, when the-then National government announced changes to “put kiwis first in line for jobs”.

Anne Tolley was the social development minister at the time and she said: “The Government is committed to getting more New Zealanders into work by ensuring they are first in line for jobs.”

Which is the exact same thing Erica Stanford is saying today.

But I bet it won’t sound any better to employers today than it did nearly 10 years ago.

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