A conversation with Michael Duignan (director) and Ben Wall (lead actor) from The Paragon, an intriguing, Kiwi-made film that makes the absolute most of a small resource pool. Whakarongo mai nei!
Andreas Harsano reports on Indonesia for the Human Rights watch, and is one of the leading figures in press freedom and training of journalists in Indonesia. Sherry talks to Andreas on Indonesia’s history of violence and mass killings, the rise independent journalism post dictator post-suharto era, and what’s next for West Papua.
Andreas recently published his book: Race, Islam and Power on Ethnic and Religious violence, so Sherry begins by asking him to summarise his research.
In November 2019, the autonomous region and island of Bougainville held a referendum to decide whether they should express a desire for independence, instead of continued autonomy as a part of Papua New Guinea. The result of the vote saw a landslide 97.7% majority vote for independence and would see Bougainville seek to replace South Sudan as the newest country in the world.
Yet, despite this, Bougainville remains an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea six years later. The difficult transition period has resulted in political tensions rising between the island and Papua New Guinea. However the recent signing of the Melanesian agreement in June is seen by experts as a significant step towards independence for Bougainville.
To talk about why this situation has dragged on for so long and what we can expect moving forward, Producer Max spoke to Gordon Nanau, the head of Pacific Studies at the University of Auckland.
This week on The Wire we speak to Green Party co-leader James Shaw about Labour's immigration policy and whether the Greens are becoming too centrist. AUT Pacific Media Centre's Kendall Hutt speaks with two Papua New Guinea students Stephanie and Kenneth about the upcoming Papua New Guinea elections. bFM producer Ben Goldson speaks to Labour's spokesperson for housing, Phil Twyford, about MBIE's Housing Affortability Measure and to E Tu's assistant national secretary, John Ryall about the fight for pay equity in the mental health center. Ben also speaks to President of the Psychological Society, Quentin Abraham, about New Zealand's poor showing in Unicef's 14th Innocenti report. Amanda looks at what happened in the Grenfell Tower fire and if something similar could happen in New Zealand.