The Wire with Joel

Spike spoke to Dr. Tom Logan about urban density and the 15 minute city in the context of New Zealand.

As Aotearoa holds one of the highest rates of family violence in the world, with an act of family violence reported every four minutes to the police, community workers are in urgent need for extra support out in the field.

Papakura marae in south Auckland is taking a frontline, ground-up approach to tackle this nationwide issue, trialling a ground-breaking family violence support and prevention programme.

 Marae Chief Executive, Tony Kake, has enlisted the support of Sir Ray Avery, Founder of the charity Help@Hand trust, to trial a domestic violence support programme to protect his frontline social workers as they go about their work in the community, giving them instant access to help if they need it and ensuring all his frontline staff are safe from harm.

Joe speaks to Sir Ray Avery on this matter.

E whai ake nei, coming up on The Wire today:

Liam had their regular chat with city councillor Shane Henderson, chatting about his re-election to the Waitakere Ward seat, the local elections and his goals for this term of council. 

We also have a report from David Liwei Shi, covering last week's tertiary education union strike. 

They’ve also spoken to Caroline Mareko from NZCTU about the pacific pay gap inquiry and what needs to change about wealth inequality in Aotearoa.

We also have a kōrero with the green parties Ricardo Menedez March, on the government's re-opening of the migrant worker and parent visas, and some of the issues they’ve identified within it.

And lastly Liam spoke to Michael Plank from the University of Canterbury about the risk of new Covid-19 Subvariants. 

Multiple sub variants of the Covid-19 Omicron variant have recently made their way into Aotearoa, seeing new territory for the country having to deal with multiple sub variants at once.

In the final Covid-19 media response, the Head of the Public Health Agency Andrew Old has made it clear to New Zealanders that the pandemic isn’t over. 

Covid cases are currently on the uptick, with Poneke Wellington leading the pack in having case numbers doubling over last weeks amount. 

To learn more about the next few months of the pandemic, Liam spoke to Michael Plank from the University of Canterbury about the new wave.