The Wire with Castor

Oto reached out to Sinead O’Flynn, the agriculture campaigner at Greenpeace Aotearoa, for the organisation’s take on the government’s recent changes to Freshwater management policy.

This was after a number of ministers announced a new amendment to the Resource Management Amendment Bill covering Freshwater and Other Matters that would prevent local councils from notifying their freshwater plans until the Government replaces the National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management.

Advocates and local government spokespeople have criticised the move, saying that it will strip power away from local councils and that the current freshwater management policy statement isn’t sufficient enough to protect Aotearoa’s water resources. 

The coalition government has recently been debating cutting funding entirely for school lunches, but instead have made a significant cut while continuing to keep lunches. 

There have been concerns raised by Health Coalition Aotearoa about the new supplier, Compass Group, stating a potential worse quality of food and inadequacy of future supply.

Sasha spoke to policy researcher from The University of Auckland and the spokesperson of Health Coalition Aotearoa, Kelly Garton, about the new supplier of school lunches and the implications this has for schools and children’s nutrition.

Recently, a study was conducted at the university of Auckland analysing the use of A.I in predicting the prevalence of respiratory disease outbreaks during flu seasons in Aotearoa.

Forecasting models are essential for hospitals in predicting admissions and subsequently allocating resources and beds.

However, during peak flu periods, and, most notably the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals across Aotearoa have been largely underprepared for respiratory disease outbreaks, hence why experts have called for improvements to be made to traditional forecasting models. 

Oto spoke to Dr Steffen Albrecht, a Research Fellow at the School of Computer Science at the University of Auckland and author of the study, to talk about the study and how A.I could help disease forecasting models in hospitals across Aotearoa. 

On the 23rd of October, a nationwide hui will be held by thousands of workers in 12 different places in the country, following policies coming into place since the current government took power last year that impacts workers’ rights, such as abolishing fair pay agreements, and mass job cuts in the public sector.

According to RNZ’s tracker, 2000 public service jobs have been cut from the period of December last year to June this year, with 7000 being cut from the public sector.

News and Editorial Director, Joel, spoke to the President of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions (NZCTU), Richard Wagstaff, about the plans for the nationwide hui, and what the NZCTU hope to get out of this day of action.