The Wire with Joel

The Census 2018 review is out, and it’s pretty clear things didn’t go so well. In fact, the head of Stats NZ Liz MacPherson resigned because of it. The review showed there were problems with the approach and it has meant the response rate was significantly low. Polly Atatoa Carr is an Associate Professor at the University of Waikato, working in Population Studies. Atatoa Carr believes the response rate of 68% for Māori and 65% for Pasifika people’s will lead to new inequities in the development and monitoring of policy and programmes for those communities. Lillian Hanly spoke with Atatoa Carr to find out more and started by asking why Census 2018 became such a mess.

The Fox River debacle has been slowly and steadily coming to an end. You may remember the severe flooding that occurred in the Southland region which caused the river to overflow, and a landfill to flood. This meant that all that rubbish was then strewn along the river for kilometres. What followed was tension between national and local government. Local government said they didn’t have enough money to clean it up, national government said the local government's hadn’t planned well enough. And during this time, there weren’t enough hands on board to do the literal clean up. In the end, volunteers took it into their own hands, along with the NZ Defence Force and DOC. Because there was also a race against the Spring rains which might make the damage worse. And, more generally, DOC director general Lou Sanson said that climate change will make this sort of disaster a lot more likely. Finally, two days ago it was announced that protecting the river from future rubbish spills could cost the Westland District Council up to 2.8 million dollars. So, Rachel Simpson spoke with Eugenie Sage, the Minister for Conservation, and started by asking why so many people volunteered to help out.

On Dear Science with AUT’s Marcus Jones we talk about ebola drugs, e-cigarettes and cats eating grass

bFM reporter Rachel Simpson spoke with Minister for Conservation Eugenie Sage about the end of the Fox River clean up 

Sherry speaks to University of Auckland employment law professor Bill Hodge on the recent bullying and intimidation allegations from the Labour Party 

Lillian speak with Polly Atatoa Carr of the University of Waikato about the effects of a significantly low response rate from Census 2018

And Tuwhenuaroa speaks with Jordan Aramoana Waiti about Waikato University’s new Bachelor of Health degree focussed on Hauora Maori.

For Board Games, we start to meet the Waitematā candidates of Communities and Residents. This week, we meet Sarah Trotman and Josh Doubtfire to talk about who they are and what their Waitematā local election campaigns will look like.