The Wire with Castor

Last week Dr Shane Reti’s bill to extend free mammograms to women aged 74 was brought into parliament. Currently only women up to the age of 69 can get a free cancer screeing. 

Although there was no time to vote on the bill, there was a lot of promising cross-party support from Labour, National, ACT and the Greens. 

Rawan spoke to research manager at the Breast Cancer foundation Adele Gautier about the foundations support of this bill, what it will mean for older women in particular and what the next steps are for breast cancer treatment

The University of Canterbury has published a study which investigates disparities between known and understood te reo Māori amongst New Zealanders, and how incidental exposure to te reo in our surroundings can better facilite active learning of the language. Rosetta spoke to co-author of the research Jeanette King from the University of Canterbury's institute of Language, Brain and Behaviour, about the study.

A recent government inquiry outlined that close to 800,000 New Zealanders are drinking water that is 'not demonstrably safe'. The Public Health Communication Centre sent out a survey to Aotearoa's political parties about the policies they each planned to introduce to protect the sources of Aotearoa's drinking water.

Today on The Wire Beth speaks to Research Fellow at the University of Otago's Public Health Department and Spokesperson for Choose Clean Water about the health of Aotearoa's water and political parties' plans to protect our drinking water sources.

For our weekly catch-up Caeden spoke to Andrew Little about vaping and responses to 111 distress calls, as well as an investigation into employers abusing migrant workers and National’s tax plan on Immigration including cost recovery.

And they spoke to Massey University Lecturer Dr Zoë Port about her research into an age disadvantage in our workforce that negatively impacts young people.

News and Editorial Director Jessica Hopkins spoke to Auckland City Councillor for Manukau, Lotu Fuli, about Māori seats on the Auckland Council's governing body, the bill to lower the voting age to 16 for local elections, and the councils TWO BILLION dollar flood recovery buyout package. 

Joel spoke to Make it 16 Co-Director Thomas Brocherie about the first reading of the bill to lower the voting age to 16 for local elections.

Beth spoke to Research Fellow at the University of Otago Public Health  Department Marnie Prickett about the health of Aotearoa’s drinking water and political parties’ plans around protecting our drinking water sources.

And Olivia spoke to Arts Access Aotearoa’s Executive Director Richard Benge about the importance of art for prisoners.