The Wire with Sara

For our weekly catch-up with the Labour Party, Wire Host Caeden spoke to Shanan Halbert about yesterday’s teacher strike, Indian Independence Day celebrations in Tāmaki Makaurau, and concerns about safety and rehabilitation in Mt Eden Prison.

For International Desk, they spoke to Olga Pantos, a research scientist at PHF Science with a PhD from Newcastle University, about the failure to negotiate a global plastics treaty at the United Nations last week.

And they spoke to University of Auckland PhD candidate Annabelle Cranswick about efforts to protect the Bryde’s whale and why they’re moving further out in the Hauraki Gulf.

For City Counselling this week, Producer Sanat spoke with Councillor Shane Henderson about Auckland Council’s recent enforcement action against gig posters in the city and Auckland’s broader economic recovery. 

He also spoke to Indie Music Promoter and founder of JunkMail Lara Marie about what Auckland Council’s enforcement action means for the community and what she believes is the path forward on this issue. 

And he spoke to the University of Auckland’s Associate Dean Pacific Sir Colin Tukitonga on the recent outbreak of polio in Papua New Guinea and the lessons we can learn from the Pacific Islands when it comes to community vaccination response.

Wherever you’re listening to this, it’s quite unlikely that you arrived at that location by walking there. How do we know this? Because, according to a 2018 census, 82.8% of trips made in Auckland were by car. And that’s despite most New Zealanders understanding that walking has many benefits. It keeps us healthy, reduces stress, and produces zero carbon emissions.

So why don’t we walk more? Well, Dr. I-Ting Chuang, a Senior lecturer at the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of Auckland, conducted a study to look into why people in Auckland and Hamilton are so dependent on cars, despite many areas fitting the conditions of being an ideal walking location.

Producer Max spoke to Dr. I-Ting Chuang, to understand what her research found about our dependence on cars and what we could do to build a walking culture.

For our weekly catchup w/ the Green Party Oto spoke with MP Ricardo Menendez-March about the party's support for the five unions taking the Government to the High Court over their pay equity law changes, The final cost of the iRex ferry project’s cancellation and The Resource Management (Consenting and Other System Changes) Amendment Bill passing in Parliament.

And he spoke to Stephen Hoadley, a retired professor in Politics and International Relations at the University of Auckland about the outcomes of the Trump-Putin summit that happened over the weekend.

Max spoke to Dr I-Ting Chuang from the University of Auckland, to discuss why people in Auckland and Hamilton aren’t walking as much as they should.

And he spoke to Gordon Nanau from the University of Auckland, to talk about the ongoing situation between the autonomous region of Bougainville and Papua New Guinea.

In recent weeks, the central government has pushed through numerous amendments to the Resource Management Act, in an effort to help streamline consent processes for corporations.

However, these changes— in particular ones surrounding freshwater planning and waterway pollution requirements — have been criticised especially by environmental advocates as disregarding the negative impacts to the environment and affording too much power to financial interests in the case of natural resource management.

As well, this past week Education Minister Erica Stanford announced a proposal to ban books with “too much” reo Māori in them from early learning materials in the ‘Ready to Read phonics scheme’. 

While she justifies the changes as being of genuine literary necessity for children’s learning, many have contended the changes as an act of racism against te reo Māori which asserts white supremacy in the education system.