The Wire with Joel

Last week Greenpeace activists peacefully confronted a deep sea mining ship off the coast of Manzanillo, México as it returned to port from the Pacific. 

Joe spoke to James Hita, Greenpeace Aotearoa campaigner on the matter, to get some insight into the impact of deep sea mining.

This week the Supreme Court has made a judgement on lowering New Zealand’s legal voting age.

The court has accepted the claims made by members of the Make It 16 campaign that the current voting age limit of 18 is inconsistent with section 19 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Essentially, preventing 16- and 17-year-olds from voting discriminates against them on the basis of their age.

The decision means parliament now has to defend the 18 age limit if it wants to keep it.

Joe spoke to Dr Nick Munn, a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy from the University of Waikato on the matter.

Since the 2019 Christchurch terrorist attack, the Labour Government has been looking to expand our hate speech laws. 

Under the Human Rights Act, people in Aotearoa are protected from hate speech on the basis of colour, race, ethnic or national origins.

The Government initially proposed extending this to other groups who are vulnerable to harmful speech, including women, disabled people, and queer people. 

But the government announced this week that they will only make one amendment to hate speech laws to include religious communities and are seeking broad support across parliament. 

95bFM News & Editorial Director spoke to Activist Shaneel Lal about the changes.

A brief warning that this story contains multiple mentions of suicide.

A new Ipsos study has revealed that three quarters of New Zealands youth has experienced immense mental distress and fourty percent have seriously considered self harm or suicide over the past year.

This issue isn’t only taking place for young people, though - 61% of  people between the ages of 35 and 49 said they were stressed to the point they couldn’t cope, and 30% reported feeling suicidal. 

With Aotearoa holding one of the highest youth suicide rates in the world, the mental health foundation sez that the current system is in crisis, and urgent action needs to be taken.

Liam Hansen spoke to the MHF CEO, Shaun Robinson, about the Ipsos survey and what needs to change in Aotearoa to improve our suicide rates.