The Wire with Max

Just this week, US President Joe Biden announced his exit from the US general elections and abandoned his candidacy, amidst concerns from his own party regarding his age and cognitive abilities and a disastrous debate performance against his political adversary, republican nominee Donald J Trump. 

After making the announcement, Biden announced his support for Vice-President Kamala Harris to succeed him as the democratic candidate and urged his contemporaries within the party to do the same. 

But with a mere 3 months until the finale of the US general elections, many commentators are discussing the next steps for the democrats, and whether or not they have the ability to compete with Trump’s branding and unanimous support from the country’s right-wing.

Oto spoke to Dr Edward Elder, Professional Teaching Fellow in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Auckland, to discuss the next steps for the democrats and the role of party branding in the outcome of the US general elections.

On Wednesday the 17th of July, the government opened submissions on the second Emissions Reduction Plan.

The Emissions Reduction Plan outlines the steps the government intends to take to meet its emission budgets.

This second Emissions Reduction Plan will lay out the government’s climate plans from 2026-2030.

The plan includes initiatives such as setting a target of 10,000 electric vehicle chargers by 2030, investigating carbon capture and storage, and improving organic waste and landfill gas capture.

However, the draft has received criticism from climate experts for not being ambitious enough in it’s initiatives to reduce emissions.

Producer Josef spoke with Ralph Sims, Professor Emeritus of Sustainable Energy and Climate Mitigation at Massey University, about the draft plan and how he thinks the plan will impact Aotearoa’s emissions reduction efforts.

For more information on the plan and to have your say, you can go to consult.environment.govt.nz, submissions close on the 21st August 2024.

On July 1st, the excise tax on heated tobacco products (or HTPs) was dropped unannounced by fifty percent. 

Speaking on the change, Associate Health Minister Casey Costello sez the reduction will help the government test the effectiveness of HTPs as a tool to help people quit smoking. 

However, given Costello’s previous parroting of tobacco industry talking points, there are worries that this change could also be coming from industry backed research. In addition, the scientific research to support the use of HTPs is slim to nonexistent. 

Wire host Castor to professor of public health at the University of Otago and co-director of the Aspire Aotearoa Research Centre, Janet Hoek, about heated tobacco products and the evidence to support them.

An Official Information Act request reported on last week by Newsroom revealed Minister for Resources Shane Jones obscured the nature of an undeclared meeting with multiple mining companies about the Fast-Track Approvals process in February. 

Initially, Jones told Newsroom the dinner was a “last minute thing”, however he corrected the record the following day saying the dinner was arranged in advance with two other participants. 

In response, Communities Against the Fast-Track, a coalition of communities, groups and other individual community organisers, have called for Prime Minister Christopher Luxon to remove Jones from his portfolio.

Wire host Sofia Roger Williams spoke to spokesperson for Communities Against the Fast-Track, Augusta Macassey-Pickard, about this, starting the interview asking her how concerned she and the Communities Against the Fast-Track groups were about this behaviour.