The Wire with Joel

For our weekly catchup w/ the Green Party’s Ricardo Menendez-March, Oto spoke to him about the suspension of three Te Pati Maori MPs, The Waitangi Tribunal's recommendation to halt the regulatory standards bill and the impact of the social security amendment bill on beneficiaries.

He spoke to Dr Claire Achmad, Chief Children’s Commissioner about New Zealand ranking 32nd out of 36 countries for child wellbeing in UNICEF’s recent childwellbeing report.

And he spoke to Maher Nazzal from the Palestine Forum of New Zealand about how the recent clearance to bring aid trucks into Gaza won’t be enough to address the needs of affected Palestinians

Max spoke to Dr Annie Jones, a Research fellow in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Auckland, to talk about a new visualisation tool that is being developed for children during cancer treatment.

And he spoke to Dr Denis Odlin, of the Management and International Business Department at the University of Auckland, about the potential for New Zealand to take advantage of the new space economy.

Just under two weeks ago the government passed the pay equity amendment bill under urgency. This bill would change existing pay equity legislation to make it more restrictive, which the government says will save billions of dollars. 

The process was originally introduced to address issues of pay inequity between sectors. While the Equal Pay Act mandates that people working the same job are paid the same regardless of gender, Pay Equity is meant to ensure industries dominated by women are not paid less than similar industries dominated by men. The process has worked by allowing applicants to compare their positions with positions in other sectors with similar workloads, skills, or experience. 

The government’s changes will limit the criteria for comparators, allow only industries with over 70% women in the workforce as opposed to the previous 60%, and removing the ability for the authority to award back pay, among other changes. 

These changes have been met with criticism from rights organisations, advocacy groups, and opposition parties. In our weekly catchup with National’s Tom Rutherford, Wire host Castor asked about the government’s reasoning behind the Pay Equity Amendment Bill. 

Social media use among young people has been the subject of recent conversation, sparked by National MP Catherine Wedd’s private members bill. While the bill hasn’t been drawn, the proposal to restrict social media from those under sixteen was met with criticism and support from other political parties. 

Wire host Castor spoke to Professor Terryann Clark from the University of Auckland about how a social media ban might affect young people and address the issues they face around mental health.

We’ve all heard about NFTs, AI, crytpo, and all those buzzwords... but do we really know what financial technology is, and how prevalent it is in our daily lives? 

Producer Faith spoke to Dr. Chanelle Duley from the University of Auckland about financial technology– or the “fintech” frontier.