The Wire with Castor

This month is Disability Pride Month, a month-long event celebrating disabled communities. It began in the United States to commemorate the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act in July 1990, and now celebrates people with disabilities, their identities, their culture, and contributions to society across the world. 

The months aims to end the stigma of disability and ultimately change the way we think about and define the term.

Wire Host spoke to Sam Morgan from the Disability Persons Assembly about the month and what it means in an Aotearoa context.

They started by asking what Disability Pride Month means.

Former Green Party MP Darleen Tana was suspended from the party after claims of migrant exploitation surfaced at a business owned by her husband Christian Hoff-Nielsen, leading to subsequent allegations of Darleen’s involvement in, or awareness of the situation. 

Tana announced her official resignation from the Greens last weekend, a move which Chloe Swarbrick and her contemporaries in the party had been urging since the allegations surfaced, however Tana still maintains both her and her husband’s innocence and has not yet resigned as a member of parliament. 

Some experts have suggested that the Greens might subsequently invoke the “waka-jumping legislation”, a law requiring MPs to leave parliament if they switch parties, which the Greens have historically opposed.  

For their weekly catch up, Oto spoke to Green party MP Ricardo Menéndez-March, about the allegations surrounding Darleen Tana and whether or not the party will invoke the waka-jumping legislation to remove her as an MP. 

They also talked about Housing minister Chris Bishop's plans to boost housing development in Aotearoa with his new "Going for Housing Growth" policy. 

Pacific island nations, such as Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, and Tonga are facing some of the worst impacts of the global climate crisis. With a landmass close to sea level, coastal population centres and limited economic development, many pacific island nations face frequent extreme weather events that they often struggle to recover from. 

A group of researchers at the University of Auckland started a project to map out cyclone and extreme weather risks for hospitals and medical centres in numerous pacific island nations to assist in planning and recovery for future extreme weather events. 

Oto spoke to Dr Michelle McCrystall, Research fellow at the Faculty of Science in Physics at the University of Auckland and leader of the project, to discuss her research and the impacts of the climate crisis on Pacific Island nations.

Lung cancer is the largest cancer contributor to the life expectancy gaps between Māori and non-māori, being the leading cause of death for Māori women and the second leading cause of death for Māori and non-māori men. In spite of this, Aotearoa has no national lung cancer screening program at all, even though similar programs exist for Breast, cervical and bowel cancer. 

To address this, a team of researchers at the University of Otago started a series of projects in collaboration with Te Whatu Ora to help develop a lung cancer screening pathway in Aotearoa, which they’ve called Te Oranga Pūkahukahu. 

Oto spoke to study lead Sue Crengle, Senior Māori Health Researcher at the University of Otago of Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe and Waitaha descent, to discuss the project and the impacts of lung cancer on Māori.