The Opposition Leader's again expressing concern about Te Pati Maori, but not yet ruling out working with them.

Toxic culture claims by Eru Kapa-Kingi were followed by the party releasing documents accusing him of threatening Parliamentary staffers.

They also show his mother, recently demoted Whip MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi, was warned about risking budget overspend.

Chris Hipkins says it’s clear Te Pati Māori has some internal issues to work through before they’d be in a position to form a government.

Chris Hipkins told John MacDonald any decisions about whether or not they’d form a coalition with Te Pati Māori will come closer to the election, as an awful lot can happen between now and then.

However, he says, if there was an election today, he’d say they’re not in a position at the moment to play a constructive role in future government.

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Isn’t it weird that, in the past 25 years, we have spent millions and millions and millions of dollars on road safety campaigns, but there have, generally, been no changes in that time to the penalties handed out for bad and dangerous driving?

I tried to find out exactly how much has been spent, but I realised that was quite ambitious.

Nevertheless, I can safely say that it’s hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact, ChatGPT reckons it’s somewhere between $2.5 billion and $3.5 billion. It’s probably way more than that.

Either way, we’ve spent billions over the past 25 years trying to make people aware of the consequences of bad and dangerous driving, but many of the fines and penalties for drivers breaking the law haven’t changed. And the AA wants that rectified.

I’m not saying don’t do it, but I’m not convinced that that would make much difference when it comes to what actually happens on the roads and how drivers behave.

Aside from the money spent on road safety campaigns, let’s also not forget the gazillions spent on cleaning up the mess after road crashes.

ACC, hospital costs, ongoing care for people – it’s estimated that that comes to about $10 billion a year.

So, in the past 25 years, billions have been spent trying to educate drivers and dealing with the consequences of road crashes. But in that time, not much has changed when it comes to penalties.

Which is why the AA’s road safety spokesperson Dylan Thomsen is saying today that, at the very least, fines should be doubled across the board to make up for inflation, and fines automatically adjusted for inflation on an ongoing basis.

He says: "We need to bring these penalties back up so they work to make drivers think twice about taking risks on the road or breaking the rules because right now they're not doing that."

I agree that they’re not working, but I don’t agree that harsher penalties would make a difference. Because when people are muppets out on the road, they don’t even think twice about the penalties, let alone the consequences.

The AA thinks differently, and reckons the changes need to focus on the types of offences that cause the most carnage on the roads.

Which are: people driving drunk or stoned, people not wearing seatbelts, people driving too fast, and people being distracted by things like mobile phones.

Dylan Thomsen is saying that the AA, generally, wants fines to double but thinks the penalties for these particular offences might have to be increased more than that to really make a difference.

The fine for using your phone while driving would certainly need to be more than doubled if we were to get anywhere close to the fines dished out in parts of Australia.

In New South Wales, if you’re caught using your phone while driving, you’re fined $350 - or $470 if it’s in a school zone. In Western Australia, it’s a $1,000 fine.

Here, it’s $150 and 20 demerit points.

Dylan Thomsen points to a recent survey of AA members which found that most of them don’t think our fines are effective. Less than 50% said they thought the fines dished out for things like speeding and using a cellphone driving were tough enough to change behaviour.

But do you really think harsher fines would change these behaviours? I don’t.

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I’m right behind the call being made today for helmets to be made mandatory at recreational ice skating and roller skating rinks.

For it to be a legal requirement that if you want to go and have a skate with your mates, you have to wear a helmet.

Because if it’s good enough for helmets to be compulsory on bikes, then why isn’t it good enough for helmets to be mandatory when someone’s on a set of skates?

When you think about it, you are far more likely to ride a bike than go to an ice skating rink or a roller skating rink. Which, surely, means that skating is way more risky. So helmets have to be non-negotiable.

In fact, I’d go beyond just ice skating rinks and roller skating rinks, I think we should be doing the same at the likes of ski fields and skate parks.

But back to the tragic death of 13-year-old Kymani Hiley-Hetaraka during a school visit to the Alpine Ice Skating Rink in Christchurch 15 months ago.

Her sister was also on the trip and the two of them were skating together when Kymani —who wasn’t wearing a helmet— fell and hit her head.

She was, initially, able to speak and she asked her sister to get her some Panadol. But she then started having a seizure, was taken to hospital, and died two days later after being taken off life support.

Since the tragedy the rink has voluntarily made helmets mandatory. But there is no law requiring it and Kymani's parents —Curtis Gwatkin and Maraea Hetaraka— think that needs to change.

They’re saying today that they want the Government to make helmets mandatory at all recreational ice skating and roller skating rinks. And I couldn’t agree more.

They’re speaking out because, initially, they wanted to wait for WorkSafe to do its investigation, thinking that someone would be prosecuted. But that didn’t happen.

WorkSafe found that there were no health and safety breaches by the ice-skating rink. No breaches by Kymani’s school. And no breaches by the external organisation contracted by the school to run the trip.

But that’s not good enough as far as Curtis and Maraea are concerned.

They say it’s left them feeling frustrated and angry, and who can blame them?

They’re determined to keep fighting on this one and plan to start a petition to try and force the Government to make helmets mandatory at all ice skating and roller skating rinks.

It’s a no-brainer as far as I’m concerned.

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If you voted in this year’s local body elections, congratulations. You can consider yourself a member of a very exclusive club.

Because, this year, voter turnout around the country was the lowest it’s been in 36 years. Which is pitiful.

So pitiful that I don’t even think my idea of having just one main voting day - like we have for central government elections - would make much of a difference.

In fact, I think there’s only one way to fix it. Something which has already been tried somewhere else with immediate results.

Because something needs to be done. Because local councils matter.

They have far more influence on our daily lives than central government ever will.

Our councils are responsible for the roads we drive on everyday. They’re responsible for getting the rubbish collected and getting water services to our houses and making sure the sewers work properly. They run our libraries. All sorts of things that we use and rely on every day.

Our councils are the majority owners of key infrastructure services. Christchurch City Council, for example, has the airport, the Port at Lyttelton, the Orion electricity lines company and others.

Not worth taking an interest in who is leading these outfits? Or having an influence in who is leading these outfits? Sixty-eight percent of us don’t think so.

Talk about apathy.

Andrew Geddis - who is a political scientist at the University of Otago - reckons that one of the main reasons for the low turnout is that the voting period is just way too long.

And people just forget about the voting papers sitting on the kitchen bench. He also points out the benefit of having one main voting day - like we do in the central government elections.

I used to think the same.

But I see only one solution. Which is something people talk about in relation to central government elections. But I think we need it for local government too.

Compulsory voting.

Because, after this pitiful turnout in this year’s elections, we need a kick up the jacksy - and making it compulsory to vote is the only way to achieve that.

In Australia, compulsory voting in federal elections was introduced in 1924 and, since then, voter turnout has never fallen below 90 percent.

More relevant, though, is what they’ve done in Tasmania. Three years ago, Tasmania made voting in local government elections compulsory, as well. And just like compulsory voting in federal elections sorted out the low participation problem, the same thing happened in Tasmania with their local body elections.

In just one election, voter turnout increased by 44.6 percent.

Councils in Tasmania have four-year terms - so the 2022 turnout is the most recent example.

But it shows you, doesn‘t it, how compulsory voting in local body elections works. And how it could work just as well here.

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Shihad frontman Jon Toogood joined John MacDonald ahead of the Christchurch Full Metal Orchestra concert. He talked about performing with Phil Rudd of ACDC, his passion for heavy music and the joy it brings the crowds, and how his health has become a priority in his later years.

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Phil Mauger has been re-elected as Mayor of Christchurch. He joined us on the show following his win, and discussed the key issues he wants to focus on. Where will cut debt? Who will be his deputy? And does he think Wayne Brown is correct that Auckland is our only international city?

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Christchurch's incumbent mayor believes debt is the Council's biggest challenge.

Phil Mauger says if re-elected he's committed to tackling the Garden's City's growing debt by selling off assets like the Lichfield Street carpark.

Mauger told John MacDonald the current debt level is $2.5 billion, and he wants it under control.

He says 25 cents of every rate dollar goes into debt servicing, and he wants that money spent on more things to benefit the city.

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I support the NZ Drug Foundation’s push to decriminalise drug use and drug possession.

The key point here is “use” and “possession”. It’s not saying let the dealers and manufacturers away with it, it’s saying we need to take a much more compassionate approach and treat drug users as people in need of help, instead of treating them as criminals.

I’m picking your response will probably be determined by your exposure to drugs or experience with drugs.

By that I mean whether your life has been affected in any way.

I reckon that if someone close to me got hooked on meth, for example, then I’d definitely be wanting the law to take a more compassionate view.

Because I know that I wouldn’t see them as criminals, I’d see them as someone needing help.

Whereas if my life was impacted negatively in any way by a meth head —for example, if someone high on meth had attacked me in the street or broken into my home— then I might not be quite so compassionate.

But if I listen to what the Drug Foundation has to say, then maybe a more compassionate approach would mean less drug addicts attacking people in the street and less drug addicts committing crimes to get money for their drugs.

Because here’s what it says about that in its report:

It says we should decriminalise personal possession and use of drugs —including drug utensils— because evidence from overseas shows that a system where people get help —and aren’t treated as criminals— even when they continue using their drug of choice... it says there is evidence that it works.

In Switzerland for example, where it has what’s called “heroin-assisted treatments”, less people have died from overdoses and there is less drug-related crime.

Another example the foundation gives in its report is Canada, where there are signs that its “safer supply programmes” are reducing the number of drug overdoses and helping drug users lead more stable lives.

So why wouldn’t you give it a go?

But it wants it done in parallel with a whole lot of money being poured into health and harm reduction services.

Which, no matter what your views on our drug laws are, is a no-brainer.

You’ll remember how, late last year, it was revealed that cocaine use in New Zealand is at an all-time high and methamphetamine consumption has doubled. And with people using more cocaine and meth, they’re at much greater risk of things like psychosis and heart issues.

So, either way, there’s going to be some sort of financial burden on the health system at some point, isn’t there?

So why not turn things on their head?

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