The Wire with Caeden

Local elections are fast approaching and there’s been a trend of declining participation. The problem is particularly bad in Auckland where turnout was under 40%. This causes problems around representation at local government level as well as setting the agenda in elections.  Lachlan spoke with Professor Janine Hayward from Otago University about local government elction turnout.

The United Nations Committee on Torture recently released a report requesting the NZ government reinvestigate torture claims at the former psychiatric hospital Lake Alice. The report is a result of a complaint from 2017 by Victor Boyd of independent watchdog group Citizen’s Commission on Human Rights on behalf of a previous patient of the facility. The UN has upheld that complaint recommending the government conduct a ‘prompt, impartial and independent investigation’ into all allegations of torture and ill-treatment at Lake alice, as well as, where appropriate, the filling of ‘specific torture and/or ill-treatment charges against perpetrators, and the application of the corresponding penalties under domestic law.’ The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry has announced it would investigate the allegations, but they have said they will not make any findings ‘civil, criminal or disciplinary liability’ as recommended by the UN. Mike Ferriss is the current director of CCHR New Zealand, Deb Rawson spoke with him to find out more.

Please note this conversation contains discussions of torture including electrocution and sexual assault

Lillian spoke to Fletcher this morning about contact tracing, an injection of cash into the regions and the announcement from the SFO that their decision regarding NZ First’s political donations will be out before the election. She started by asking how he felt about moving to level 3 next week.

Fletcher stated the government would have had the necessary capacity for contact tracing as of the 23rd April - the originally stated day to come out of Level 4 before the government announced an extentions. I wrote to the Ministry of Health asking whether this was indeed the case and this was their response:

"The Ministry is confident that New Zealand can provide high quality contact tracing. The Public Health Units (PHUs) and National Close Contact Service (NCCS) have a baseline capacity in place as well as additional capacity they can call on to deal with the contact tracing needs that might be ahead of us.  This includes managing under a range of scenarios that could occur within the different alert levels and controls and includes a current ability to scale up to 10,000 calls a day. From our most recent information from public health units and the National Close Contact Service, for the period 13-17 April, 80% of close contacts were traced within 48 hours of the case being notified to the units."

Government has announced some guidelines of Alert Level 2 with more expected to come. Laura Kvigstad gives you a quick rundown of the guidelines so far and the response that some industries have had to them.