Listen back to features and interviews from 95bFM's daily news and current affairs show. Joel Armstrong, Castor Chacko, Oto Sequeira, and Caeden Tipler focus on the issues of Tāmaki Makaurau and elsewhere in independent-thinking bFM style. Monday-Thursday 12-1pm on 95bFM.
Joe spoke to Alex James from University of Canterbury about their new research into gender pay equity within universities, and how it explores interventions that will improve the representation of women at higher levels of academia.
This week’s Wire shows will contain a series of interviews with Auckland’s mayoral candidates, which bFM has been putting together to provide our listeners with relevant information on the candidates and their policies. Today, Casper speaks to Auckland Mayoral Candidate Viv Beck.
Our regular fortnightly segment with OurActionStation is back! Trishil speaks to Protect Putiki about their recent petition calling for the Auckland Council to instigate a review of the resource consent for the marina at Putiki Bay.
Joe also speaks to Andreea Calude, a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at University of Waikato about the Plain Language Bill and why it’s important.
Our regular fortnightly segment with OurActionStation is back! Trishil speaks to Protect Pūtiki about their recent petition calling for the Auckland Council to instigate a review of the resource consent for the marina at Pūtiki Bay.
This week’s Wire shows will contain a series of interviews with Auckland’s mayoral candidates, which bFM has been putting together to provide our listeners with relevant information on the candidates and their policies.
Today, Casper speaks with Viv Beck, who is currently the chief executive of Heart of the City, a business advocacy group for Auckland’s city centre, and has been endorsed by the National-Party aligned Communities and Residents organisation.
With the new Plain Language Bill being brought to parliament, it aims to make comprehensible information from government organisations a basic democratic right.
Joe had the opportunity to speak to Andreea S. Calude, a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at University of Waikato, about this bill and why so it’s important.
This is the full version of Casper’s interview with Auckland mayoral candidate Viv Beck, of which an abbreviated segment was played on the Monday Wire.
Viv Beck is currently the chief executive of Heart of the City, a business advocacy group for Auckland’s city centre, and has been endorsed by the National-Party aligned Communities and Residents organisation.
Early this morning, Queen Elizabeth the Second passed away at age 96.
The queen was the head of state for the United Kingdom, Aotearoa New Zealand, and multitudes of other nations throughout the commonwealth.
She originally ascended to the throne on the Sixth of February 1952, making her the longest reigning monarch at seventy years.
The United Kingdom is undergoing a day of mourning ahead of her funeral in ten days time, however the full extent of it’s impact on New Zealand is currently unknown.
Considering her appearance on coins and 20 dollar notes, an economic reworking could soon be in place.
However, the end of the mourning period could possibly see conversations rise on New Zealands need for a head of state.
The possibility of becoming a republic is not unique to our country, with other nations also attempting to understand where this could take them in the future.
For some commentary, Liam had a chat with Stephen Hoadley, an international relations professor from the University of Auckland.
Liam spoke to Stephen Hoadley from the University of Auckland about the passing of Queen Elizabeth the Second. We had a chat about what this means and what could change.
They also had a chat with Pippa Coom on our regular city counselling segment to learn about the extension of the White Lady Food Truck’s License and the efforts to get people back into Auckland's City Centre
And finally Liam spoke to Steve Greenwood from Drive EV about the current state of electric vehicles for World Electric Vehicle Day.
Stella speaks to Chris Wilson, Senior Lecturer of Politics and International Relations at the University of Auckland about his recently published work in which his colleague James Halpin infiltrated Action Zelandia, a far-right extremist group in Aotearoa. Tuva’a has his weekly catch-up with Labour’s Andrew Little and Frances brings us Greendesk, speaking to PhD candidate from the university of Otago Nick Foster about his work in pest eradication. Finally Stella speaks to Shrutika Gunanayagam from Able, a media access trust, about Global Literacy Day (today!), and how kids who watch captioned content are more literate.
Auckland Transport has announced another parking fare increase, pushing up parking across AT-managed lots 50 cents per hour.
They justified the increase as necessary to cover ‘rising operational costs’ and to cover the Auckland Council’s increased resource commitment to supporting Aucklanders with “issues like blocked driveways, footpaths, and clearways”.
As well, Auckland Council have voted to endorse the redevelopment of Eden Park, in favour of a new waterfront stadium — bringing the latest development in a long-standing discussion about the best approach to attract tourism and financial productivity to Auckland.
All they need now is the government to pitch in $100 million dollars to fund the project.
Producer Sara started her interview with Shane Henderson by asking why raising parking prices was the preferred option for covering council operational costs
Just recently, Workplace Relations and Safety Minister, Brooke Van Velden, announced sweeping changes to health and safety regulations for businesses that she described as “low-risk”.
Some of the changes involved: narrowing the focus of the Health and Safety at Work Act to risks only causing death, serious injury or illness, creating a hotline for the public to report “overzealous” road cone placement and reducing "tick-box and safety activities" such as psychosocial harm policies for small businesses.
Around this same period of time, Greens MPs Tamatha Paul and Benjamin Doyle received intense media and political scrutiny for comments they made at a university panel and on social media respectively, with the backlash towards Doyle forcing them to abstain from parliament this week.
The Greens recently issued a call to the government to scrap their proposed changes to Early Childhood Care, which involve recognising qualifications other than early childhood teaching qualifications, removing up to 74% of ECE licensing criteria and removing requirements for regular updates and family.
In their weekly catchup with the Green Party’s Ricardo Menendez-March, Oto spoke to him about the party’s take on all of these issues.
BirdCare Aotearoa is a wild, native bird hospital that works to rehabilitate sick and injured birds back into the wild.
For their upcoming event: ‘Bird Heros,’ a part of EcoFest 2025 on the 6th of April, the workshop will look at the best practices on rescuing wild native birds, and will include a tour of their bird hospital, which is not usually open to the public.
For this week's Green Desk, Producer Leilani spoke to the Hospital Manager at BirdCare Aotearoa, Pooja Dorle, about the rehabilitation processes of birds within their hospital ahead of their next workshop.
Fellow Green Desk Producer Liam, and News and Editorial Director Joel, went to the previous workshop over the weekend, and spoke to the Chair of the organisation, Kevin Furgeson, and volunteer Marina, and had a tour of their facilities. Thanks EcoFest!
BirdCare Aotearoa also has a fundraiser running to shed light on seabirds affected by street lights and brightly lit buildings across the city, affecting their migration patterns and causing birds, such as the protected Petrels, Shearwaters, and Prions, to fall and injure themselves. To support their clinical rehabilitation practices, you can support their campaign on givealittle.
For a number of years, Aotearoa has been dealing with a shortage of psychologists and similar professionals to deal with the growing mental health needs of the wider population, with estimates suggesting that an additional 1,000 more psychologists are needed to fill gaps in the profession.
In response to the country’s growing mental health needs, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey announced a new Associate Psychologist role, consisting of recent post-graduates, to work alongside fully trained Psychologists.
However, a number of Psychologists and experts have criticised the introduction of this new role, saying that these associate Psychologists may be expected to take on the responsibilities of clinical Psychologists despite being underqualified.
For this week’s Get Action! Oto spoke to Dr Kumari Valentine, a clinical psychologist based in Dunedin, who’s launched a petition calling on the government to roll back the introduction of the new Associate psychology role and look to other methods of filling gaps in the Psychology profession.
If you're interested in signing this petition, you can find it here:
Last week the Green Party’s Tamatha Paul made comments about police presence in Wellington, particularly how increased police activity made some feel unsafe. She also noted some discriminatory and harmful behaviour from police officers towards Wellington’s homeless population. These comments, presented at a panel hosted by the University of Canterbury’s Greens and Peace Action Ōtautahi, were Paul restating feedback she had received from her constituents in Wellington central.
The response to Tamatha Paul’s comments was extremely critical from all sides of the political spectrum, involving feedback such as “insane” from prime minister Christopher Luxon, “unwise” and “stupid” from Labour leader Chris Hipkins, and “just weird” from ACT leader David Seymour. The comments and their responses lead to a series of articles across all major New Zealand news networks.
In our weekly catchup with the National Party, Wire host Castor spoke to MP Tom Rutherford about the substance of Tamatha Paul’s comments and whether the seemingly disproportionate reaction is appropriate.
This week on Dear Science our expert Dr. Cushla McGoverin chatted with us about various April Fools pranks in the world of science, including the 'Sheep Albedo Hypothesis' from here in Aotearoa.
Thanks to MOTAT, the museum inspiring the innovators of tomorrow!
On Sunday, Finance Minister, Nicola Willis, announced plans to combat the supermarket duopoly between Foodstuffs and Woolworths. This could include breaking-up or restructuring the current chains, with Cabinet also announcing a formal request for information, or RFI, into the matter.
For our weekly catch up, News and Editorial Director and Monday Wire Host, Joel, spoke to Te Pāti Māori’s Takutai Kemp about this announcement, and whether she, and the party, thinks this will be enough to address food accessibility in Aotearoa.
We also discussed the comments made by Green MP, Tamatha Paul, about the police, and whether she believes these comments have become sensationalised.
Finally, we discussed the party’s calls for mandatory police body cameras.
But first, they started off by asking Kemp about how the party are feeling about Nicola Willis’ most recent announcements into the supermarket duopoly.
Last week, the government announced its plans for reforming the Resource Management Act, or the RMA, introducing two acts to replace the current RMA. The plan is to bring the two acts before the select committee next year, passing them just before the next election.
For our weekly catch up News and Editorial Director and Monday Wire Host, Joel, spoke to the ACT Party’s Simon Court about this reform, working with the opposition, and the lack of a Treaty clause.
We also talked about concerns that the health and police system in Aotearoa are failing, following an 11-year old being misidentified as a 20-year old by police and being administered antipsychotic drugs.
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters gave a “State of the Nation” speech last weekend where he strongly criticised Labour and announced his party was declaring a “war on woke.”
The government has announced a new replacement for the Resource Management Act, looking to pass it before the next election.
And Labour Foreign Affairs spokesperson David Parker has criticised the government for not condemning Israel in the context of recent military action and the blocking of humanitarian aid in Gaza.
For our weekly catch-up with the Labour Party, Wire Host Caeden spoke to Deputy Leader Carmel Sepuloni about all of these topics.
Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally added to a Signal group chat with top United States security officials who were discussing military plans for strikes on Yemen.
The group chat discussed operational details, and officials, including the Vice President JD Vance, seemed unaware of Goldberg’s presence.
Jeffrey Goldberg initially left out some of these sensitive details in his article on the group chat but has released more specific information after the Trump administration downplayed the situation and said no classified information was shared.
For International Desk, Wire Host Caeden spoke to Andre Fa’aoso from the Yale Daily News about this issue.
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