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.
Scotland First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, has proposed a referendum date for Scots to vote on their independence from the United Kingdom - the 19th of October, 2023.
However despite UK PM Boris Johnson saying now is not the time, Sturgeon says they will run the referendum regardless by having her party run on the sole issue of independence.
The last referendum vote on this issue took place in 2014, but commentators have pointed out the major shift in the UK landscape since due to Brexit.
To learn more, Liam spoke to the University of Otago’s Liam Mcllvanney ,first asking why some Scots are pushing for independence and what's getting in their way.
Another stacked and varied show on this Fridays Wire! Today:
Liam spoke with councillor Richard Hills about the positive new report on Kauri Dieback in the Waitakere Ranges on City Counselling.
They also had a chat with UoAs Stephen Hoadley about the new NZ EU trade deal.
Frances spoke to Sarah McFadden, the GM of Kelmarna Gardens in Ponsonby about regenerative local food systems.
Liam also spoke with Liam Mcllvanney from UoO on Scottish independence.
And finally Alejandra Perotti from the University of Reading on the possible extinction of tiny mites that have sex on your face as a part of our newest segment, Strangest Things!
The Government must move faster to close gender and ethnic pay gaps if it wants to help people who are struggling with low wages due to discrimination, says MindTheGap.
On Tuesday in Parliament, the Government published its response to the Education and Workforce Select Committee inquiry into pay transparency.
The national pay gap is 9.1% but it is a lot higher in many companies. On average it means for every dollar a Pākehā man earns, a Pākehā woman earns 89 cents, a Māori woman 81 cents and a Pasifika woman 75 cents
Emilia Sullivan spoke to Jo Cribb, founder of MindTheGap.
A group of University of Auckland academics have won the Collaboration category of the Safeguard New Zealand Workplace Health and Safety Awards for their new tool Hotspots. Hotspots enables med students to provide information about their perceptions of bullying, harassment, discrimination and levels of respect and inclusion, identifying both areas of concern and areas of excellence during their clinical placements.
Emilia Sullivan spoke to Anneke Tomkins and Dr. Bradley Patten, who were part of the team that developed Hotspots.
The hearings into the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol are set to resume in mid-July, however yesterday the committee reconvened for an unplanned, surprise hearing.
Emilia Sullivan spoke to Dr. Maria Armoudian, a senior politics lecturer at the University of Auckland.
Our weekly chat with the health minister Andrew Little is back! Tuva’a Clifton speaks to Little about the new investment into harm reduction for gambling, as well as free flu jabs being expanded to children and people with mental health issues, and how the flu is straining our hospitals.
Emilia Sullivan speaks to the University of Auckland team who won an award for their system to help med students report bullying and unprofessional behaviour on clinical placements.
She'll also be chatting to Jo Cribb from MindTheGap about their calls for the government to act more urgently to close gender and ethnic pay gaps in New Zealand.
And she also chats with with Dr. Maria Armoudian from the University of Auckland about yesterday’s surprise January 6th hearing into the insurrection at the U.S Capitol.
Data collected by the Helen Clark Foundation has shown fast food and takeaway businesses make over $1 billion dollars a year on average or three million dollars a day.
So why is this industry so lucrative? Host Christina Huang asked Dr Michael Hale, a public health doctor at the Auckland Regional Public Health Service.
Earlier this year, Associate Professor Leah Watkins, from the Marketing department at the University of Otago, ran a study using bodycams on children and found they were exposed to nearly a brand per minute. Christina asked her about the impact of kids seeing so much marketing.
This week, News and Editorial Director Aneeka Moheed spoke to the National Party's Dr Shane Reti about National's campaign to fast-track midwives into the country and recent polls showing the majority of the country are in favour of drug law reform.
On the 29th of September, the second New Zealand Food Waste Summit will be held in Wellington, bringing together innovators across Aotearoa to discuss ways to combat food insecurity and excess food waste.
Ahead of the conference, Emily spoke to WasteMINZ Senior Projects Manager Sarah Pritchett about existing food waste minimization efforts and how households can do their bit to act sustainably.
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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