Last week Associate Minister of Health, David Seymour, laid out his expectations for Pharmac for the upcoming year.
Some of what was in his letter of expectations has caused much public discourse - particularly the point in which Seymour says Te Tiriti o Waitangi shouldn’t be considered in decision making at Pharmac.
Te Pāti Māori has called for Seymour to step down from his role as Associate Minister of Health, and one of Pharmac’s directors, Anthony Jordan, has resigned from his role, saying the removal of Treaty principles from Pharmac did not align with his own morals and ethics.
Given the overwhelming evidence of poorer health outcomes for Māori, producer Evie spoke to the ACT party’s Simon Court about the reasoning behind these expectations, and the party’s feelings about the backlash.
In breaking news early this morning, President Joe Biden stepped down as the democratic candidate in the election race. It comes following mounting concern around Biden’s age and competence to serve another term as President, as well as a campaign from the party itself for the President to step back.
Now, only three and half months out from election day the democrats must pick a new candidate, likely to be Vice-President, Kamala Harris.
Producer Evie spoke to Geopolitical Analyst from the University of Otago, Geoffrey Miller, about what happens next and what effect this will have on the democrats chances of staying in office. We also talk about what impact the result of the election will have here in Aotearoa, as well as on the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine.
In 2022, the Supreme Court used the idea of damage to a person’s mana to overturn Peter Ellis’ historic convictions for child sexual abuse.
In two more recent cases – Green v Police, and Sweeney v Prison Manager of Spring Hill Corrections Facility – the courts too engaged with the concept of mana.
Wire host Sofia Roger Williams spoke to lecturer at the University of Canterbury’s Faculty of Law, Rachael Evans (Ngāti Tama, Ngāti Pamoana), about the significance of the precedents they set and how the courts have measured mana.
She began the interview asking her about these cases and how each of them engaged with the concept of mana.
An Official Information Act request reported on last week by Newsroom revealed Minister for Resources Shane Jones obscured the nature of an undeclared meeting with multiple mining companies about the Fast-Track Approvals process in February.
Initially, Jones told Newsroom the dinner was a “last minute thing”, however he corrected the record the following day saying the dinner was arranged in advance with two other participants.
In response, Communities Against the Fast-Track, a coalition of communities, groups and other individual community organisers, have called for Prime Minister Christopher Luxon to remove Jones from his portfolio.
Wire host Sofia Roger Williams spoke to spokesperson for Communities Against the Fast-Track, Augusta Macassey-Pickard, about this, starting the interview asking her how concerned she and the Communities Against the Fast-Track groups were about this behaviour.
The government has decided to leave AI considerations out of its plans to revive the previous government’s Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill, saying the “broad issue of AI” would be considered later.
However, there is increasing evidence that new generative AI internet search tools provided by OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google can increase the risk of returning misleading, false, or partially correct information.
Research by senior Lecturer in Screen, Audio and Journalism at AUT, Merja Myllylahti, looks further into this and how search functions and chatbots shape news discovery.
Wire host Sofia Roger Williams spoke to Merja about the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill and the risks of AI chatbots using news content.
Last week, Associate Health Minister David Seymour released his letter to Pharmac setting out his expectations for the agency.
Among the instructions, Seymour has received backlash over saying that it is inappropriate for Pharmac to keep considering Te Tiriti o Waitangi in its decisions.
As a result, on Friday a Pharmac director, Dr Anthony Jordan, resigned saying he “could not with good conscience” work for Pharmac following directions to stop considering Te Tiriti o Waitangi in its decisions.
On Friday, Wire host Sofia Roger Williams spoke to professor of health economics in the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences at the University of Auckland, Paula Lorgelly, about these instructions delivered by Seymour to Pharmac and Dr Anthony Jordan’s resignation.
She began the interview asking her for an outline of what the key points of the instructions were.
Producer Evie speaks to the ACT Party’s Simon Court about the government’s expectations for Pharmac in light of one of the directors stepping down.
Wire host Sofia speaks to Professor of health economics in the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences at the University of Auckland, Paula Lorgelly, about last week’s announced instructions for Pharmac.
She also speaks to Senior Lecturer in Screen, Audio and Journalism at AUT, Merja Myllylahti, about AI and New Zealand news in light of the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill.
Evie also speaks to Geopolitical Analyst from the University of Otago, Geoffrey Miller, about Joe Biden’s recent decision to end his re-election campaign.
Sofia speaks to spokesperson for Communities Against the Fast-Track, Augusta Macassey-Pickard, about Minister for Resources Shane Jones’ undeclared meeting with mining companies about the fast-track
And she also speaks to Lecturer at the University of Canterbury Faculty of Law, Rachael Evans, about courts using mana in judgements.
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