Nick Mills: Is the WCC's Chief Infrastructure Officer commuting from Auckland?

For Friday Faceoff this week Nick Mills is joined in the studio by former Wellington City Councillor Tim Brown and entrepreneur JD Trask. Our panel get heated from the start as Nick heard a senior official at the Wellington City Council commutes to Wellington from Auckland. Is this acceptable for a high paid, infrastructure position? Does it matter what city they live in?  Then an issue raised in our Business Panel earlier this week brought up Wellington's lack of international flights. What effects are our panel seeing themselves and what paths do they want?  Brown, who was on the board of Wellington Airport said he'd be surprised if there weren't new airlines coming here "before the end of next year". The panel then faceoff over confidence in Tiaki Wai. They question Tiaki Wai's plans, costing, and if anything has changed since Wellington Water?  Trask and Brown go hard on the Zoo asking council for $13 million for lion enclosure upgrades, and pose the question - should Wellington even have a zoo? Plus was the PSA strike strictly political, and the panel share their hots and nots. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For Friday Sport's Kick-off Jason Pine and Adam Cooper join Nick Mills to dissect the sports of the week, what's ahead this weekend.  The All Blacks play their fourth match against the Springboks in Baltimore on Sunday morning with some swaps to Rennie's team. What do our panel make of the team naming, and are we weaker without playing South Africa in Super Rugby? And Piney's biggest match of the weekend - Warriors vs Dolphins.  Piney, Coops and Nick give their predictions and debate what will be the better game Warriors or All Blacks? LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

OPINION: I want to come back to Jenny Chetwynd today, because frankly, I think Wellington ratepayers deserve some answers. Chetwynd was appointed Wellington City Council’s Chief Infrastructure Officer in 2024. This was a big appointment.   The council talked up her experience, her leadership and the enormous job ahead of her — water, transport, waste, emergency management and major infrastructure projects. She was the infrastructure fixer. And she is being paid accordingly — around $440,000 a year. Then Moa Point happens. Fourteen billion litres or thereabouts of untreated sewage ends up being discharged into the marine environment, and we get a Crown Review trying to establish how the hell Wellington allowed this to happen. And what does our Chief Infrastructure Officer do? She doesn't sit down for an interview with the Crown Review. She provides written information. Review author Raveen Jaduram couldn't have been much clearer.   He said her not being available made the investigation more challenging and increased the chances of the reviewers getting something wrong. His point was incredibly simple: if you can interview somebody, you can ask them directly what happened and where the evidence is. Finance Minister Nicola Willis came on our programme on Thursday, and went even further. "I think she should be made to front up," Willis said. "And if I was the Mayor, I'd be saying 'Actually, we are publicly accountable," "You are paid well to take on significant responsibilities, your responsibility was to build a stronger relationship with Wellington Water. This Crown Inquiry waned to ask questions about that, and she didn't front.". Now, here's where this gets even more extraordinary. I am now being told Jenny Chetwynd doesn't actually live permanently in Wellington, and that she commutes from Auckland. Now, I want to be absolutely fair here, I have not been able to independently verify the details of that arrangement, and I want Wellington City Council to tell us exactly what the situation is, but several sources have told me it's true. It raises a number of questions for me: Does Wellington City Counicl’s $440,000-a-year Chief Infrastructure Officer live in Auckland? How many days a week is she physically working in Wellington? Who pays for the travel? And where was she for last night's Tiaki Wai public meeting? Because this is about accountability. You were hired into one of the most senior positions at Wellington City Council to help sort out our infrastructure. Our infrastructure fails catastrophically. A Crown Review wants to interview you — you don't front. The media wants to interview you — you don't front. There's a public meeting about our water infrastructure — you're not there. And now there are questions about whether you even live in the city you're being paid nearly half a million dollars a year to help fix. Enough. Wellington ratepayers aren't asking for anything unreasonable. Front up, Jenny Chetwynd, and answer the questions. After several days of requesting answers to some of these questions from the Wellington City Council media team, they responded minutes before the start of our show on Friday. "That is a highly unacceptable line of questioning that we will not dignify with an answer." A Council spokesperson said. I'm bewildered.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's Politics Thursday, and this week Nick Mills is joined by Labour's Ginny Andersen and National's Tim Costley to debate the top political issues of the week. The PSA strikes called for better pay, but Nick wonders if they got too political after Nicola Willis said union workers were told to wear red.  Our panel debate the necessity of the strike, with Costley pointing out the national average salary for public servants is $100k compared to $85k in the private sector.  Plus, does Wellington need a zoo, and should ratepayers have to pay nearly $14 million for a new lion enclosure? LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

With the election only two months out, Finance Minister Nicola Willis joins Nick Mills in the studio this morning to talk the economy and Wellington issues. When will ordinary people feel the economy begin to recover? With the latest OCR hike, Willis shares her predictions for the financial future. On the local front, pressure is building on WCC Chief Infrastructure Officer Jenny Chetwynd who did not interview for the Moa Point review.  Willis called on Chetwynd to "front up" and take accountability.  “Apparently they provided written information, but you and I both know the lawyers would have written that.” She said while the failures are spread across departments, it is clear the Wellington City Council did not do enough.  Mills and Willis discussed the public servants strike yesterday, and according to the Minister PSA union members were encouraged to wear red yesterday in support. Plus, Willis shares her thoughts on the Green's "KiwiMart", and the MSD admin error. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tiaki Wai Board Chair Will Peet joins Nick Mills in the studio for an update after a hectic month with the Moa Point Review, first bills due and Commerce Commission oversight.  Mills questions Peet over the review and accountability. What has Tiaki Wai learnt so this will never happen again? Peet gives more detail on the new oversight from the Commerce Commission and refutes Mill's concern Tiaki Wai have no competition to regulate prices. They debate the price water meters, and Peet clarifies the councils calculate the bills - "we don't have billing system, we are completely reliant on the council's billing systems". LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We are just over a week out from one of Wellington's favourite events, World of WearableArt, GLO! at TSB Arena. To celebrate, WOW CEO Meg Williams joins Nick Mills in the studio to share how the team are gearing up for another hit year, and she brings along a special treat. This year there's a new addition to the WOW calendar - Taste of WOW. Two new experiences will be held at the Intercontinental to share edible art inspired by WOW's collection of garments. Check out the details on the WOW website, to see and taste a new side to Wellington's beloved event.  LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EDITORIAL: I'd love to have this conversation this morning because I genuinely don't know where the line is anymore.  The Government's advice is that kids don't necessarily need to stay home just because they've got a cough, a headache, a runny nose or a blocked nose.   Holy hell, I think one of the four you stay home.  Not go to school with cough, a headache, a runny nose or a blocked nose.  Come on, that’s pretty tough.  If they haven't had a fever for 24 hours, they're eating and drinking normally, they're alert and capable of learning, then mild symptoms alone don't necessarily mean a day off school.  Now, I get that. We've got a terrible school attendance problem.  But haven't we learnt something from COVID?  I'm certainly more conscious now about sneezing, coughing, washing my hands and potentially giving something to somebody else an ailment.  And here's my confession: I don't feel 100 percent today.  I had a terrible night's sleep. I went to bed feeling a bit average.   Woke up in the middle of the night, been awake since about 1 or 2am feeling blocked up, headachy, generally a bit crap.  But here I am.  And you know what, after my coffee this morning I feel great.  Maybe that's generational. I'm probably old school about it.   Unless I'm really sick, I come to work. You push through it.  But is that actually the right thing to do?  Because I work with people who, at the slightest sniffle, they say Sorry, can't come in. The slightest headache, oh no they can’t come in.   And sometimes I think: Really? That's enough for a sick day?  Well, you’ve got 10 you may as well use them.  Then you've got the complete opposite.   Someone arrives looking absolutely dreadful.   Coughing, spluttering, clearly sick, and you think: Mate, I admire your commitment, but please go home because I don't want to get whatever you've got!  And that's the other side of this.  Going to work sick isn't necessarily heroic, you can infect five other people.  We've just come through an extraordinary flu season. It’s been pretty horrible.  Hospitals have been under enormous pressure and schools have had huge numbers of kids away.  Now I was at my dentist the other day and I said to her, I've got a pretty open, friendly relationship with her, I said, how's it been?   And she said “it's been terrible”,  I looked at her and I said, it takes me a month to get in to see you, how can it be terrible?  Everyone's always sick, cancellations, bang, bang, bang.  Now that affects a lot of people.  So I want to get into the middle ground here.  I don't want to sit on the fence, but I want you to determine, I want you to determine how sick you have to be to have a sick day.  Is it a temperature? Vomiting? A terrible cough? Not being able to get out of bed?  Tick, tick, tick, tick should be days off work or school.  Or is simply feeling lousy enough?  And parents — where's the line with your kids?  Now I was a pretty lenient parent, must admit.  “I don't feel like going to school today, dad, I'm not feeling great.”  Stay home, I’m okay with that.   Because surely we don't want a generation believing every sniffle means a day on the couch, day in front of Netflix, a day on the machines.   But equally, we don't want genuinely sick kids being sent into classrooms because we're obsessed with attendance figures.  LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For this week's Business Panel, Nick was joined by Chamber of Commerce CEO Hayley Horan, and WellingtonNZ Chief Executive Mark Oldershaw.  They discussed how the region is tracking approaching summer time, and tackled issues such as attracting events, business investment, and the safety of city streets. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

An independent supermarket owner says state-owned stores are feasible, with some work. The Green Party's pledging to tackle grocery prices by breaking up our duopoly with KiwiMart - costing 2.8 billion dollars.  It'd force Woolworths and Foodstuffs to divest 120 branches into public ownership, and two distribution centres.  Upper Hutt's Plenty Foods owner, Henry Hutcheon told Nick Mills it's a realistic idea, that'll need fine tuning. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.