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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Do we need more MPs? The NZ Initiative thinks we do - saying today that, instead of 120, we should have 170.

It says the number of MPs in New Zealand is low compared to other countries with similar populations and we need 50 more to keep them accessible to voters.

Another thing it’s calling for is a four-year parliamentary term. That’s a no-brainer, as far as I’m concerned. But 50 more MPs? No thanks.

However, I do think some change is needed because of the size of some of our electorates.

Which is essentially why the NZ Initiative is advocating for more MPs.

But I think a much better option would be to have less list MPs and more electorate MPs.

Because, you think about the size of some electorates - the West Coast is a prime example - I’ve always thought it’s crazy that one electorate MP has to represent and cover such a huge area.

The Te Tai Tonga Maori seat is another one. One MP has to cover the whole South Island - as well as Stewart Island, the Chatham Islands, Wellington City and the Hutt Valley.

The reason the NZ Initiative is making this call today, is because it’s reviewed the last 30 years under the MMP voting system. And its two key points are the parliamentary term and the number of MPs.

Senior Fellow Nick Clark says the three-year term is too short for effective long-term policymaking. He says: "By the time a government finds its feet and starts implementing policy, it is already thinking about the next election. A four-year term would give governments time to develop coherent long-term policies."

No argument from me there.

He also says our parliament - with 120 MPs - is about 30 percent smaller than international benchmarks say it should be.

So he says get 50 more. He also thinks we need less cabinet ministers and reckons 15 would be enough.

But I reckon he’s going to be pushing it uphill to sell his idea of more politicians.

I’m not sold. Far from it.

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Labour had their Capital Gains Tax policy leaked earlier this week.

The tax would only apply to residential and commercial property sales, not any other taxable areas. A decision which has led some to question if this is really a Capital Gains Tax.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins had previously said that there would be no Capital Gains Tax under his leadership. However, he told John MacDonald that, 'after the election when we lost, I said, well, everything goes back on the table.'

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So another ham-fisted announcement from the Labour Party.

In fact, it wasn’t even an announcement. Because of a leak, it was forced this morning to confirm its plan to include a capital gains tax in its policies for next year’s election.

Which looks to me like a very watered-down, scaredy-cat version of a capital gains tax that won’t impress many.

Because, if they were serious, they’d apply it to everything. None of these exclusions. Which I’ll get to.

Another fly in the ointment - aside from all the exclusions and the leak - is what the money from the tax would be used on. Three free doctor’s visits a year for all of us.

Which I think would create more problems than it would be worth.

So, if Labour forms the next government, it will introduce a capital gains tax that, if it’s to be believed, would only apply to what seems like a very short list of things.

There’d be no capital gains on the sale of the family home and there’d be no capital gains on the sale of farms. But there would be a capital gains tax on the sale of rental properties and commercial properties.

So the farmers would be happy and the landlords - residential and commercial - would be brassed-off.

There would also be no capital gains tax on KiwiSaver, shares, business assets, inheritances, and personal items. Which, Labour says, would mean 90 percent of us not paying any tax on any property we own and all of us getting three free doctor’s visits a year.

That’s because the revenue from this new tax would be funnelled straight into the health system

But has Labour really thought it through? Because, as soon as you start telling people they can go to the doctor for free three times a year, what chance do you think they’ll actually be able to get an appointment with everyone doing the same?

What’s more, Labour says “one in six New Zealanders cannot afford to visit their doctor when they are sick.” So why aren’t they targetting those people?

Why would you give free doctor’s visits to the five-out-of-six who can afford to go to the doctor?

That’s why this tax proposal is Labour’s second-worst policy idea in the last few years, coming a very close second to the non-sensical, last-minute GST-off-fruit-and-vegetables idea it cooked up before the last election.

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